


Clogged Drain

by GoblinCatKC



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Horror, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-07
Updated: 2016-01-24
Packaged: 2018-05-05 11:33:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 28,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5373797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoblinCatKC/pseuds/GoblinCatKC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bodies of water were once doorways between this world and the next. Living in an old water treatment plant means being there when the doorway opens. Inspired by J-horror.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place after they move to the water treatment plant. Technically it's the 2003 series, but I take enough liberties with settings and timelines (ie. I don't care about the details) that previous knowledge isn't required in the slightest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> all wonderful art on this page credit to erkma-tmnt.tumblr.com

  


The only reason Michelangelo didn't scream was because Klunk hadn't moved. Cats had a sixth sense, didn't they? All animals had that instinct about danger, and if Klunk was still fast asleep at the end of the blankets, not crying, not scratching at the door to be let out, not hissing...then his own senses were just playing tricks on him.

And he'd just imagined the faint thump and scratch from the closet.

Michelangelo tightened his grip on the pillow, lying absolutely still. Behind him, Leonardo lay curled against his shell, one arm draped across his waist, and behind his older brother, Raphael and Donatello lay huddled as usual. None of them snored, too well trained for that, so the room was silent, save for the faintest of Leonardo's breaths and Michelangelo's beating heart.

He missed the old lair terribly. This abandoned water treatment plant was bigger, sure, but it was cold, metallic, and any little movement echoed so that all its drips, creaks and groans sounded as if they were in the same room. After the terrible rush from their last lair, they slept in this hastily chosen room only because it was so close to the kitchen. They lay against the far wall, near the space heater, mere feet from the closet.

Scrape. Scuff. Crack.

His look shot back to the closet. That wasn't metal. That was cloth rustling, skin dragging on the floor.

Why couldn't he move? His whole body was frozen to the bone. Sleep paralysis-he seized on the phrase like a prayer. Sleep paralysis, night hag syndrome, when you can't move in your sleep and your brain turns on the fear juice. So he really was asleep. It was just a nightmare-

Crack. Scrape. Thump.

The thing he told himself wasn't real had reached the door.

He gulped. There were no working locks on the doors. They'd all rusted, if there had been any in the first place. The closet was only a little out of arm's reach. Whatever it was, it was there, right there-

The door creaked, a long whine as the door so slowly swung an inch at a time. He had to be sleeping how else could he see it in the dark? The details were so clear the line of the floor, the corner of the room, the door to the main hall. The closet door as it moved, the gaping darkness behind it.

The white hand curling around the door.

He couldn't breathe. A human hand, ghastly white, dripping slime and loose skin. It adjusted on the door, getting a grip, and then came the arm at a broken angle, impossibly bent upwards as it pulled itself along. He felt every jerk of its muscles, as if it was dragging its loathsome body from a grave sucking it back in. Long black hair pooled out from under the door.

Bad movie, he told himself over and over. Bad movies, horror flicks, just a horror flick nightmare. Not real, just a horror flick nightmare-

As if it could hear him, its head snapped up, empty black eye sockets in a white face, jaw hanging brokenly open-the cracking sound was its bones clicking against each other.

Its hand slammed on the floor, dug into the steel, yanked itself right at him, reached out again, again-its head lolled sideways on a broken neck but its empty eyes stayed on him as it crawled, arms twisted almost backwards, open mouth in front of him in an instant, a sound like wind shrieking through a street grate.

Its hands, as strong as steel, went around his throat-and finally he could scream, grabbing at her hands, trying to push her away. Rushing water screamed in his ears and his whole body felt like winter slush-ice filled his lungs, burned his skin-her hand seized his mouth, curling around his teeth and trying to rip his jaw-

The lights came on, blinding him. Someone was shaking him, yelling over his screams, and his fist struck something solid.

"-ikey! Mikey!"

Something slapped him once, then twice. Even though his eyes were wide open, several seconds passed before her face faded, replaced by Leonardo's concerned look and Donatello beside him.

"Wake up, dumbass!" Raphael yelled. "It's just a nightmare!"

Gasping, Michelangelo put his hands on Leonardo's shoulders, his arms, showing himself this was real, not a dream, real. He was alive. The thing wasn't here. His brothers were with him. Just a dream.

"It's okay," Leonardo said, holding him in return. "Calm down. You're safe. Breathe...dammit, breathe in slow. You're hyperventilating."

"I..." Michelangelo sucked in a deep breath, held it, then let it out in a shudder. "I...oh hell."

"You back with us?" Raphael asked, watching him with one hand still on the lamp. His other hand was rubbing his jaw, and Michelangelo winced as he realized he'd punched him.

"...yeah. Yeah," Michelangelo said. "I'm good. Sorry."

"No more scary movies before bedtime," Donatello said sternly, a relieved smile belying his anger. "Damn...you scared the crap out of us."

"Sorry," Michelangelo said again, sitting up and bringing his knees against his chest, holding himself. "It was just so damn real..."

A little of the fear ebbed as he felt them move around him, leaving the light on as Raphael crawled back to bed. Michelangelo watched him go, reassuring himself that there was nothing bad. He glanced at the closet. The door was closed.

"Dreamt something came out of the closet," he muttered, starting to feel embarrassed.

"You're too old for a boogeyman," Donatello laughed.

"Not like that," Michelangelo said crossly, whapping him with a pillow. "Like that Grudge flick. Ghost girl chick with no eyes."

"The Juon girl had eyes," Leonardo said, getting to his feet with an eye on the closet.

Irritated that Leonardo would remember a detail like that, or the flick's proper name, Michelangelo grumbled until he realized that his big brother meant to look inside the closet. A wave of nausea and fear ripped right back through him as if he was in the middle of the dream again.

"Wait, you don't have to open it," Michelangelo said, raising his hand as if to stop him. "I'm a big boy, I don't need you checking under the bed."

"I know," Leonardo called over his shoulder. He slid the door open and scanned the inside, and Michelangelo's tension eased as nothing shot out to drag him inside.

Then Leonardo knelt, touching his hand to the floor. As he raised his hand, they all saw it glistening on his fingertips.

Water, and a single strand of black hair.

  
credit erkma-tmnt.tumblr.com 


	2. Chapter 2

Donatello sat at the breakfast table and cast a longing look at the kitchen to his left. Back in the old lair, he could have leaned or even sat on the counters and eaten in the relative peace and calm. The counters here were all uncomfortably cold steel, however, leaving him no choice but to sit at the table, head resting on his hands, watching in exasperation as Leonardo spread out Splinter's old books and scrolls among the newer books Michelangelo liked to collect.

"Will you please stop?" Donatello sighed, not really believing they'd listen to him. "Dreams are not evidence of ghosts."

Michelangelo picked up one book after another, glancing over their titles. "Bakemono, Yokai no Oto, Kwaidan, Prayers and Seals...damn, Splinter was holding back on all the good stuff."

"Yeah," Raphael said, unfurling a scroll and skimming the text to look at the pictures. "This is way cooler than the history crud we kept getting."

"You'd like it even better if you'd kept up on your kanji," Leonardo said, sitting down and opening the first book. "Mikey, I'll need you with me on this. If we do have a ghost, there's gotta be proper tactics for getting rid of it."

"Gotcha!" Michelangelo sat down and gave Raphael a smug grin. "I get to read the cool books while you have to...um..."

Blinking, Michelangelo looked at Leonardo. "What do they have to do?"

"Hopefully not bother with...this," Donatello said, picking up one of the books by the corner as if afraid it would rub off on him. "Seriously, Leo, tell me you don't really think there's a ghost in the closet. It was just a stupid nightmare."

"Mikey never gets nightmares like that," Leonardo said. "And you found no sign of a leak anywhere in that closet."

"I examined it after waking up in the middle of the night with everyone shouting," Donatello sighed. "There could've been a busted pipe and I wouldn't have noticed."

Not surprised by how Leonardo deliberately ignored his argument, Donatello rolled his eyes and dropped the book. He already knew how this conversation would play out. His big brother was so damn predictable sometimes.

Beside them, Michelangelo and Raphael watched over the top of their books, not daring to speak up. Best to humor Leonardo when he was giving out assignments, and never a good idea to speak to Donatello when he was irritated.

"Raph," Leonardo started, "I want you helping Don getting more information on this place. Even if Mikey did just have a bad dream and somehow made it rain in the closet, we should know why this place was abandoned. And what it does exactly. And how it works."

"At least we'll be doing something productive," Donatello said, standing up with a sense of relief that his sibling wasn't going to make him read ghost stories. "And not doing our best imitation of Ghost Hunters."

"You planning on sleeping in there tonight?" Leonardo asked far too lightly.

"Maybe I will," Donatello huffed, but there was no conviction behind it.

He wouldn't sleep alone. The mattresses, blankets and pillows that made up their communal bed had been hastily moved from the haunted room to just outside the kitchen. Michelangelo had joked that they were protecting the most important room in the lair from ghosts, but they'd left the bedroom door closed and none of them had gone back so far. Donatello thought it was silly, but if Leonardo and Michelangelo wouldn't sleep there, then neither would Raphael, and Donatello followed after. After a few years of having their own bedrooms, losing their father and the uncertainty of their lives had driven them back into the same bed pile again.

"Come on," Donatello said to Raphael as he left the table. "Let's get the laptop. I'll need you to help sort everything we print out and to kick the printer from time to time."

"Is it on the fritz?" Raphael asked, walking by his side.

"No, it just bugs me sometimes," Donatello said.

Watching them go, Michelangelo let go the breath he'd been holding and relaxed.

"Thanks," he said softly. "It feels kinda stupid, but there's no way it was just a nightmare."

"It's okay," Leonardo said, starting to read. "For what it's worth, I believe you. But it's gonna take more evidence to convince Don."

"I know," Michelangelo said. "Funny. I still kinda hope he's right."

As they fell to reading, they split the stack up by language with Leonardo taking the Japanese side, easily more fluent from not only reading Splinter's books but from tons of manga and doujins. Although it was their custom on Comic Night to sit shell to shell while reading, occasionally trading over their shoulders, both of them had developed a preference for one language over the other.

Both of them took notes so they wouldn't have to reread the same books. For all his impatience, Michelangelo could be diligent when he was interested, and this felt like an extension of learning the Silver Sentry's extensive backhistory.

Michelangelo looked up when he heard Leonardo's sigh. His big brother stared at the thickest book on his side, with thin pages, tiny print and water damage that made some of the characters blur. Leonardo stole a look at the pile of slimmer English texts on Michelangelo's side.

"You wanna do one of these first?" Michelangelo offered. "The one I'm on is gonna take me awhile."

For a moment Leonardo looked tempted, but ultimately shook his head. "No. Switching'll just make my headache worse. But you're finding things?"

"I'm focusing on stuff with water," Michelangelo said, turning his book so Leonardo saw the picture of a ghost rising out of a pond. "Got a whole section in here on lakes and rivers being hotspots of ghostly activity, and I figured, hey, we're in the middle of a river under the lake."

"I guess there must be something to it," Leonardo said, taking a break to consider. "Lots of horror flicks have ghosts in the water somehow. Noroi, Dark Water, Ringu..."

"They mentioned one of those," Michelangelo said, looking back at the chicken scratch notes beside him. "That ghosts live in the water. Yeah, here it is. 'Play in salt water, monster will come'."

"Too much waterplay and the demon will get you," Leonardo nodded, remembering the phrase off the top of his head. "That's Ringu. It goes a step further, though. That if...wait..."

He shuffled through his neatly taken notes, picked out the proper book and opened it to the right page, reading the kanji in translation. "'The water is the in-between place, where spirits and demons thrive. It is the place between worlds, fluid and changing, a bridge between what is natural and unnatural. To go into the water is to..." He paused, making a quick code switch in his head. "To inadvertently invite spirits."

Michelangelo frowned. As they fell silent, they both grew increasingly aware of the rush of water below them. They both shared a look.

"So..." Michelangelo said. "I guess we're still looking for ways to get rid of them?"

"'Them'?" Leonardo laughed humorlessly, opening the heavy book and getting back to work. "You've only seen one. I don't even wanna think that there might be more."

~

Reaching Donatello's lab meant a trek from the kitchen along a walkway that took them to the edge overlooking the river. The rains were heavy that week, making the river surge and splash against the walls, and Raphael took a moment to glance down if only to make sure the water wasn't going to sweep up too far.

The steel structure they called home had three stories, one of them just above the waterline. For turtles who had lived in cramped lairs most of their lives, the first floor provided more than enough space, and they rarely went down to even the second level, leaving most of the plant unlived in. Like a giant cave, the sound echoed and surrounded them as the water pounded through its submerged exit, flowing through an unseen drain. Not until they reached the lab, going up the steel staircase and closing the door, did the noise abate to a soft rumble.

Grabbing a chair and spinning it so he could straddle it, Raphael scooted close enough to read over his brother's shoulder. "This is gonna be boring, ain't it?"

"I don't think so," Donatello said, pulling up google and entering a name and number. "In fact, this shouldn't take too long to get. The hard part will be figuring out what it means."

"Don, it's an abandoned plant," Raphael sighed, leaning over and using his brother's shoulder like a pillow. "They're not gonna have-"

"And there it is," Donatello said, clicking a link. Two more clicks and a map appeared on the screen.

"What the hell?" Raphael said, leaning forward. "Is that...this place?"

"There's old serial numbers on the walls," Donatello explained. "You can see 'em if you pay attention. All I did was search that."

"Don't they try to hide floorplans and stuff like that for these places?" Raphael asked. "National security?"

"It's not like anyone knows about it," Donatello shrugged, scanning the file. "But I got lucky. There's a freedom of information thing on this place. Looks like...ooh. That's not good."

"What?" Raphael said. He squinted to read the small print, but Donatello was in the way. "Was it abandoned 'cause it's haunted?"

"Tch, as if," Donatello laughed. "No, just a little bit of asbestos and lead poisoning. A bunch of workers here got mesothelioma."

"Aw man," Raphael sighed. "Are...are we gonna get sick, too?"

"I don't think so," Donatello said. "The city spent millions to scrape the plant clean and then closed it up as an environmental hazard."

"Why close it after they cleaned it?" Raphael said.

"I think they cleaned it so they could close it," Donatello said. "Happens with toxic messes all the time."

He expanded a patchy map, pulling up multiple black and white images. "These are old mimeographs, but I think it's as good as we're gonna get. Let me see if I can make the font any clearer."

"I'll bet Leo can puzzle 'em out," Raphael said, raising his hands as if that was obvious. "He keeps reading all those old books. Have you seen some of those things? Nothing but scrawls."

"Yeah, I have seen them," Donatello said, unimpressed. "And you agree with me that it's not a ghost?"

"Probably just the bedtime Oreos Mikey keeps scarfing," Raphael said, but then he paused. "'Course, there was that water in the closet..."

"It was just a leak," Donatello said with all the exasperation of someone who no one will listen to. "It happens-water leaks and gathers somewhere you can't see, drains out, and then there's no more leak. Mikey just heard it in his sleep, his subconscious came up with a scary dream to make sense of it, and now he's got Leo freaking out, too."

When Raphael didn't respond, Donatello shot a look at him. His brother had suddenly become very interested in the images as they printed out.

"You wouldn't happen to be freaking out," Donatello said slowly, "would you?"

Raphael groaned, already knowing he had lost the conversation. "I just wanna make sure, you know? 'Cause it's not like we haven't seen ghosts before. And this place always gets creepy at night."

"We're underground," Donatello sighed. "Of course it's going to be creepy."

An awkward silence settled on them as they waited for the printer to finish. Raphael took each page, idly flipping through each one.

"Must be the right map," he said. "There's the kitchen, and the hallway and the bedroom...hey, I thought there were only three floors to this place."

Donatello looked over his shoulder. "Four floors, and it looks like there are some extra rooms I haven't seen before. Did you know the back bathroom has another door?"

"I didn't know there was another staircase on the outside corner," Raphael said, frowning. "The water comes up over that edge-it's impossible to get to."

"We're gonna need to go around the lair and look," Donatello said, printing out another copy. "And I was so sure we'd explored the whole place."

"So was I," Raphael said. "Actually, I'm pretty sure of it. We went all the way to the wat..."

Raphael thought back to when they first arrived at the lair, the first few days of heady relief at finding each other and then eager excitement, exploring the wide spaces and new rooms, finding what was left behind by human workers from years ago. Raphael frowned as his memory stirred.

"Oh yeah, I remember now," Raphael nodded. "Me and Mikey found an open elevator and it was nothing but water underneath. We blocked it up and left it."

Donatello frowned at the floor plan, deep in thought. "Y'know..."

He tapped the paper a few times, then nodded once to himself. "We need to tell Leo. We need to go through this place again. Make sure we're the only ones here."

Raphael half smiled. "We'd have heard squatters here by now. You thinking it's a ghost?"

"Thinking back to the monsters and things we've seen..." Donatello mused, looking up at him. "Ghosts can't hurt you, but what if we missed one of those giant insects?"

Raphael paled as much as one of them could. "You don't think one of those could be living down here, do you?"

"I think we need to talk to Leo," Donatello said, touching Raphael's hand. "It'll be okay."

Clearly not happy but also not moving away. Raphael grumbled and wished Donatello couldn't read him so well.

"I'd rather face a ghost," he muttered.


	3. Chapter 3

"So, we gonna split up?" Michelangelo asked, walking on his hands in a broad circle around his brothers.

At the kitchen table, Leonardo set out the flashlights and looked over the map again, squinting at one of the words before tentatively penciling in "Maintenance Shaft." With him, Raphael and Donatello each took a flashlight and leaned over the map. Several indecipherable words now had legible labels-water supply intake, filtration screens, basin-but most were impossible even for their big brother.

"No," Leonardo said. "I want us together on this one. Don, you take the map. You've got to keep us oriented and make sure we account for all the rooms in here. Plus you might know what all the unlabeled rooms are when you see them."

"Got it," Donatello said. "And everyone has their communicators, right?"

All of them reached to the side of their shells, just to make sure. Michelangelo managed to balance on one hand to do so.

"Mikey," Leonardo said, waiting to make sure he had his little brother's attention before continuing. "You're on point. Never get more than a few feet away, but you're the most agile. You'll have to be careful maneuvering through some of the wreckage down below."

"No problem," Michelangelo grinned. "Woohoo, this is gonna be like cave spelunking!"

"What about me?" Raphael asked.

"You're behind me and Mikey," Leonardo said. "Stay with Don so he's free to read the map. And if something bad happens, I prefer knowing you can come running in."

"And you?" Donatello asked.

"The tight spots," Leonardo said, standing up and taking a deep breath. "As usual."

Raphael put his arm around Leonardo's shoulders, leaning down and nuzzling his cheek. "Aw, don't spazz. You're not short, you're just right."

Irritated, Leonardo ducked his arm and ignored his snickers. "Don, see if you can't keep him quiet."

"You won't let me brain him with the flashlight," Donatello pointed out.

"Are we ready to go now?" Michelangelo asked, coming to his feet. "Down into the spooky bowels of the abandoned water plant, through dark tunnels with no light, broken and rusty debris covering the floor and giving all the ghosts and goblins places to hide?"

"Yes," Leonardo said. "And you go first."

"Woohoo!" Michelangelo flipped his shellcell open and held it up, using the thin LED light to show their way down the main hall. "Then we'll go down the stairs and start from the bottom. Hey Don, you said these record, right?"

"If you press the bottom and top left keys at the same time, yes," Donatello said. "But not more than a few minutes."

"Why do you wanna record anything?" Raphael asked. "We're right here. We're gonna see anything you see."

"Dude," Michelangelo gasped as if Raphael understood nothing. "So I can put up ghost clips on youtube. Those are super popular and I could make some money off of it."

"You upload anything," Leonardo said, "and I will toss you into the water myself."

"Spoilsport," Michelangelo grumbled. "I'll bet you there's tons of spooks down here."

They started down the staircase, little more than a steel frame of steps with an iron railing. It went down one flight, then two, then three. The lights were all cracked, burned out or missing, and they all turned on their flashlights.

"There aren't any spooks," Donatello said. "We would have seen something by now."

The floor groaned underfoot, sending a long echo down the hall into the darkness. For a moment they all fell silent, listening to it rumble and fade away until there was nothing but the sound of rushing water.

"Maybe not," Michelangelo said. "Some ghosts take months to do anything. Gotta get used to the new people inside the house."

"There aren't ghosts," Raphael said, although he didn't sound too convinced. "Just a lotta leaks and funny sounds."

"We'll see," Michelangelo said. He pushed open the first door on the left, wincing as it shrieked against the rust on the hinges. He glanced at Leonardo, who nodded, then forced the door open despite the noise and looked in.

"This room's pretty empty," he said. "Actually, if I remember right, we covered most of this hallway before. It's the blockage down the hall we couldn't get by."

"We were kind of busy then," Leonardo said. "We didn't have much time to check it out properly."

"Still don't think we missed anything," Raphael said, looking over their shoulder. He put his hand on Donatello's shoulder, indulging in his brother's reassuring presence. No bugs, he told himself, no bugs.

"We'll see," Donatello said. He glanced over the map, then shone his flashlight down the hall. "The debris is past there, and then it's two rooms, one after the other."

"Gotcha," Michelangelo said. "Lemme just check and make sure everything's same as I left it last time."

He and Leonardo looked in each room along the way, but nothing stood out. Most of the walls and floors were rusted and covered in flecked paint, but nothing felt weak or buckled under their weight, so they walked on and came to the pile of wood, steel doors and random sheets of metal - a tight and tangled mass of trash from floor to ceiling.

"How'd all this get in here?" Michelangelo asked, pulling at one of the lengths of steel and getting part of the pile to shift out of the way. "No one would have brought it down this deep."

"Probably a flood," Leonardo said, yanking a long slat of wood clear. "Water comes in, pushes the trash in, then rushes out again."

"And everything's jammed in here real tight," Michelangelo said. He yanked out another beam, then carefully put his hands on the more stable looking part of the pile, pressing down to check that it wouldn't come down. "Okay, see you on the other side..."

He climbed nimbly over the debris, slipping through the space at the top by the ceiling. After a moment, there was a clatter and then his flashlight shone at the gap again.

"Ouch...okay, wasn't as stable down here. On the bright side, it should be easy to make the hole bigger now."

Leonardo sighed. "Don't hurt yourself. If we have to, we can leave Raph here."

"Yeah right," Raphael grumbled, going to the pile and pulling some of the debris out. "I ain't sticking back here by myself."

"It's probably just going to be more rusted crap," Leonardo said, climbing past him and easily sliding through the growing gap. "I don't think you'll be missing much."

"Don't get far ahead," Donatello said.

"Don't worry," Leonardo said called over the pile. "You were right. Just a couple rooms here."

On the other side, Michelangelo shone his light around them. The hall was short, both doors had fallen, and broken machinery filled the rooms so that they couldn't walk in. Michelangelo took a step over the mess, then sighed.

"No good," he said. "It gets higher farther in. What is all this stuff anyway?"

"Don might know," Leonardo said, kneeling and examining the wreckage. "But...this kind of looks like engine parts. I recognize some of it from when Don and Raph fix their bikes."

"Oh yeah," Michelangelo said, lifting a long strand of bent metal. "This looks kinda like a drive chain. And those have to be motors."

"And a bunch of screens in the corner," Leonardo said.

"Those are screens?" Michelangelo said. "Geez, they're huge."

"If its packed in tight enough, I might be able to get over it," Leonardo said, leaning on his sibling as he took a step. "Can you see the walls?"

"I thought the screens _were_ the wall for a minute," Michelangelo said. "Put your light with mine, and we'll sweep."

They started at one end of the room, slowly moving their flashlight beams together. With the combined light, the extent of the rust was obvious. The motor parts lay in a jumble over sheets of torn steel, mixed with ripped screens.

"It looks pretty...oh man." Michelangelo sighed as their lights fell on a dark square near the ceiling. "Is that an air vent?"

"I...don't think so," Leonardo said. "The edges don't stop going down. I think it's a door."

They exchanged a look, then sighed and looked over their shoulders. "Don!"

"Hang on!" There was a sound of metallic clattering. "Just a sec."

"You know," Raphael called out, grunting with exertion. "This would've been a lot easier if a couple people had, I dunno, stayed behind to help!"

"I was kind of getting used to the silence," Leonardo muttered.

"Well, Don said there were only two rooms back here," Michelangelo said, turning back to the dark spot. "There's one behind us. And this one. So...where does that thing lead to?"

"Well, if it's not on his map, he won't be able to tell us anyway," Leonardo said. "Okay, stay here and wait for me to get back."

"Whoa," Michelangelo said, grabbing his arm. "I don't think everything in here's all that stable. You go in there, and you could sink into a whole bunch of sharp stuff."

"Gimme some more credit than that," Leonardo said, a little offended. "This is hardly the worst obstacle course I've gone through."

"It's not an..." Michelangelo sighed as Leonardo slipped out of his grip and moved swiftly over the debris. "Careful, that pile looks wobbly."

"It's just a bunch of old crates and wooden pallets," Leonardo said, balancing on the high stack. Deftly avoiding the nails and splinters sticking up, he crept over the stacks of rusted steel filters, then froze as the pile creaked loudly. He held up one hand, using it to steady himself, then sighed in relief as the pile stabilized. "See? No prob."

"Just be careful," Michelangelo said. Wary of blinding his brother, he kept his flashlight angled ahead of him along the mess. "Think I could follow you?"

"No way," Leonardo said. "I'm barely making it. Some of this would break under you."

Leonardo turned and picked his way over the mess, maneuvering on all fours. He stuck the flashlight in his belt to free up his hands, using a rip in the ceiling to leverage himself over a wide space and coming to rest beside the dark doorway.

"Can you see inside?" Michelangelo asked.

"Hang on." Leonardo pulled his flashlight and held it up. "I don't think so. This thing's pretty deep. It's pitch black in there."

"Hang on," Michelangelo said. "Lemme see if I can come over to you."

"Don't — I mean it," Leonardo said, glancing at him. "It's all pretty loose. Anything bigger'n me is gonna bring it crashing down."

"That doesn't make me feel better about you being in there," Michelangelo said.

"It doesn't look as crowded inside," Leonardo said, ignoring him. "In fact...hup!"

He slipped to the floor, one hand against the debris to make sure it wouldn't topple, keeping his eyes on the darkness. Faint dust particles swirled in the light, disturbed by his touch.

"Are you okay?" Michelangelo called out. "Leo?"

"I'm fine," Leonardo said over his shoulder. "I'm going in."

Michelangelo said something else, but Leonardo didn't pay attention, crouching down in case anything was dangling from the ceiling, and he crept down a short hallway into a new chamber where the air seemed to grow heavier, pressing down on him.

As the light swept through the room, his breath caught in his throat.

Of everything he expected to see, a shrine was not one of them.

A small table stood on the far side, with an old candle that had burned down to little more than a puddle of wax. Dozens of newspaper and magazine clippings of people lay piled on the table and scattered on the floor, but when he drew closer, he found that they were only pictures of random people, all with their eyes scratched out.

There were a handful of small bowls he recognized as being used with incense. One of them still had the last stick, long since smoldered out. Nothing else remained.

He was vaguely aware of his brother calling from the other room, but he couldn't make out the words. His senses sharpened - his soft breaths became loud until he forced himself to slow down. He became aware of his heart beating. When he noticed that the flashlight beam was trembling, it took an act of will to grow still.

He moved the beam across the walls, and his breath caught in his throat.

Dozens of paper charms were stuck across the walls at odd angles. He couldn't read the marks, long streaked from water, but there was no doubt in his mind. It was as if he'd walked into a nightmare.

"Leo, dammit, talk to me!"

He dropped the flashlight. As Raphael's voice cursed at him from his hip, he sighed at himself and knelt, picking up his flashlight again. Then he unclipped his communicator and flipped it on.

"Sorry," he grumbled. "I'm okay."

"Where are you?" Raphael said, and Michelangelo and Donatello's voices chattered in the background. "I can't see your light."

"I'm in another room," Leonardo said. "It's..."

"It's probably an oversized access closet," Donatello said. "Makes more sense that it isn't on the map."

"This is insane," Leonardo said, holding up the communicator, streaming the image to them. "Can you see it?"

He heard their sharp breaths, heard them whisper into the communicator as they leaned close. Donatello noticed the charms, and Michelangelo and Raphael argued about what the writing meant. As Leonardo waved the communicator slowly past the altar, intending to show them the whole room, they suddenly gasped and fell silent.

Wondering if they were okay, he started to back out of the room. "Are you still there?"

"...Leo, can you see her, too?"

Leonardo's heart sunk down as he realized what his little brother meant. As if he could prove Michelangelo wrong, he kept the communicator and the light focused on the altar, on the shadows tilting with the light.

"Guys," he whispered, "there's no one there."

Silence.

"Jesus holy-!"

"Shit-"

"Run!"

Their startled voices drove a spike of adrenaline through him, and he acted without thought, trusting them and running blindly back into the darkness. The flashlight tumbled to the floor, showing him the corridor and the debris stacked in front of him. He'd underestimated how tall the pile was from this side. There was no way he could jump, not without using the walls for leverage, and by then he'd be caught by whatever was in there with him.

Feeling frozen through, he grabbed his sword and drew at the same time he turned.

She was nothing more than a silhouette, a dark shadow that should not have been there blocking the flashlight, like a physical sensation of something standing there at the door. He backed up against the debris, staring at it with wide eyes. Its sides heaved as if it was breathing.

"...so dark and you..."

He titled his head, leaning forward slightly. Whispers, whispers between choked sobs and he grew more aware that it was holding its head as if in deep grief.

"So dark...and you in the light..."

Against his better judgment, straining to hear what it said, he took a step forward. His brothers were screaming for him, but their voices were faint and distant.

"Leo! Say something!"

"Leonardo!"

He crept a little closer, quietly sliding his sword back in its sheath. His wits were back, no longer pushed out by panic, and he would need his hands free to climb. He should be climbing already, but curiosity made him pause.

"So dark...and you get the light...give me the light!"

Its head snapped up, or at least what he thought was its head in the mass of shadows. Its voice, once grieving, turned hateful and angry.

"Give me the light! Give me the light! Give me the light! Give me the light give me the light give me the-"

It lunged. He turned and leaped against the wall, used it to jump over the pile and landed on the pallets, using their motion as they toppled to leap to the pile of screens, wincing as the torn edges scraped his hand. As they twisted under him, he slid to the floor, landing at Raphael's feet.

He didn't stay there long. Raphael bent and put an arm around him, pulling him back to his feet. He leaned against his brother, looking over his shoulder at the dark doorway.

"Is it still there?" he said, struggling to catch his breath. "Did you hear it?"

"Didn't hear anything," Michelangelo said. "But damn, we saw it. Holy crap, you seriously didn't see anything?"

Leonardo shook his head, only now noticing that all of them had drawn their weapons. Slowly as the moments passed, they lowered their guard enough to back away from the main room.

"We're going back upstairs," Donatello ordered, clearly taking charge. "Raph, hang onto him."

"Got it," Raphael said as he slung Leonardo's arm over his shoulder.

"But what if it follows us?" Leonardo said, trying to turn despite how Raphael twisted him to face forward. His knee buckled and he would have fallen if his brother hadn't held him, supporting him as the floor seemed to roll.

"Your shot of the room showed me it probably can't," Donatello said. "All those charms - look, I'll explain later, okay? Right now I want us upstairs. We have salt, right?"

"What?" Leonardo gasped, feeling like his head was underwater.

"Just shut up and keep up," Raphael said. "And you better believe you're getting it for going quiet on us."

Leonardo didn't answer. He vaguely noticed that Raphael and Donatello had managed to clear a large berth through the clutter in the hall, making it easy for them to pass through, and then they were upstairs, back in the familiar florescent lights of the kitchen. Raphael set him in one of the chairs at the table, helping Donatello scour the cabinets for salt and grumbling when Michelangelo swooped past them with three large Morton salt cans. Leonardo barely noticed as they poured a large circle around them and the kitchen, and after a moment's thought, included the nearby bathroom.

Finally the hectic flurry around him grew slower. Donatello pulled out a chair and flopped down, putting his head in his hands. Michelangelo perched on the table, for once not shooed off, and Raphael dropped a blanket around Leonardo's shoulders. Leonardo blinked and pushed himself up from the table.

"What?" he groaned. "I don't..."

"You're freezing," Raphael said. "And you were soaking wet coming out of there. Did you even notice?"

"What?" Leonardo reached up and felt his mask. Sure enough it was drenched, and he slipped it off his face. "There wasn't any water in there."

"I know," Donatello said. "I know. Okay. Okay, we have to do this the right way. We have to slow down and think. Slow down...and think...slow down..."

Michelangelo gave him a rueful smile. "I guess it's a ghost?"

Donatello glared at him. Then a small chuckle slid out, followed by a bitter laugh. "Okay, yeah. It's a ghost."

The laughter was like a release. All of them gave in, leaning on the table, looking over their shoulders, taking in the sheer ridiculousness of it. Leonardo sighed and lay his head on the table again.

"Man, I haven't been that freaked out in a long time," he said. "No wonder you had nightmares, Mikey."

As the chuckles died down, Michelangelo frowned. He looked at Leonardo.

"Y'know, we all saw it on the communicator screen, but...whatever it was..." He sighed, knowing they wouldn't like what he had to say. "It wasn't the chick I saw in the nightmare."

They all looked at him, trying to rationalize what that meant.

Donatello sighed. "So it's more than one."

The plant had never felt so large and empty and hostile. Beneath them, the river surged past like an angry, steady roar, sinking into the dark tunnels below.


	4. Chapter 4

With a frustrated sigh, Donatello pushed the book across the table and leaned back, rubbing his eyes. Beside him, Michelangelo looked up from his own book and half-smiled in sympathy.

"Take a break," Michelangelo said. "You've been reading the same page for five minutes."

"It's not that," Donatello said, though he put a bookmark in even as he closed the cover. "This isn't helping. Maybe Leo or you could get something out of this, but there's so much that contradicts and so much that doesn't make any sense. Water is a sacred, water is a gate, water lets monsters in, water seals ghosts in...and there's never a reason for it."

He grumbled as he held his head in his hands, his fingers working at his headache. "I don't get it. If there are ghosts, why don't they ever have reasons? Why aren't there standardized methods of dealing with them?"

"It's not a science, dude," Michelangelo said, sitting up more.

"Well, it should be," Donatello snapped. "There should be technical manuals on this, not half-baked folklore and...geez, I can't even get half this poetry."

"It isn't scientists writing the manuals," Michelangelo said. "And the poetry isn't that bad if you know what you're reading."

"I'm gonna write a ghost hunting manual," Donatello muttered. "And it's gonna have drawings and schematics and plain, straightforward ways to fight them. None of this stories and flowery crap."

Half-tempted to defend their books, Michelangelo chalked Donatello's ill-temper on the ghost and figured arguing would just make him angrier. If he had to figure out blueprints or chemical formulas to understand ghosts, he'd probably be pissy, too.

"I don't know how you even manage the Japanese stuff," Donatello said, glancing sideways at him. "Half of it is puns and double meanings."

Michelangelo had to concede the point. "Usually Leo does the Japanese."

"I know," Donatello said. "And we've got his notes, but..."

But it wasn't compared to having the turtle. Both of them looked over their shoulder at their siblings, Raphael sitting up against the wall and Leonardo curled at his side, head on his shoulder. They'd spread a blanket over them, but their big brother huddled up tight against Raphael as if freezing, burying his face against Raphael's throat. At the sudden silence, Raphael raised his eyes at them.

"He finally stopped fidgeting," he whispered. "But he ain't getting any warmer."

Frustration washed over Donatello's face, eyes squeezed shut, mouth pressed into a firm line. Michelangelo looked down at the book, flipping a few useless pages. Maybe constantly studying these for months would have helped them, maybe given them a few sutras or charms or something. Just looking at them once told him nothing more than bodies of water were dangerous, and they already knew that from movies.

"I don't think we're gonna get anything else from these," Michelangelo said, closing his book. "Not in one sitting. I think we need to know more about this place, instead."

Donatello frowned. "We're not exploring again, Mikey. Not at all—none of us are even leaving this circle, got it?"

"No, no, that's not what I mean," Michelangelo said. "I mean looking up more than just the map. Let's find out if anyone died here, or if there were accidents, things like that."

"I thought about that," Donatello said. "But my laptop's in the lab."

Michelangelo waited, expecting a reason, but when his brother didn't elaborate, he leaned forward and nudged him. "And...?"

"I know it's stupid," Donatello said softly. "It's not like we've seen her up here. But it's...it's a long way from here to there."

Grimacing, Donatello motioned at his lab, the room slightly raised above the rest of the floor and nestled in the corner. Only a minute's walk from the kitchen to the lab. But a minute was a long time to be out in the open. Sixty seconds ticked by so slowly.

"There's the ghost in the closet," Michelangelo said. "I know she can come out."

"That one's probably a leak," Donatello said as if he had to defend his first guess, but there was no conviction behind his words.

Hesitating, Michelangelo looked back at Raphael as he pulled Leonardo a little closer, and if he watched carefully, his big brother's shivering grew more and more noticeable, subtly shaking beneath the blanket.

"I don't wanna go either," he admitted, turning to Donatello. He put his hand on his brother's. "Let's go together."

After a moment, staring past the book in front of him, Donatello nodded and squeezed Michelangelo's hand. "All right."

"Be careful," Raphael said, then turned his attention to Leonardo as he mumbled in his sleep. "No no, don't wake up."

Suiting up as if going into battle, Donatello and Michelangelo put on their gear, exchanging a look when it came to strapping on their weapons. Then Michelangelo sighed and stuck his nunchucks in his belt.

"You never know," Michelangelo half-laughed. "Maybe nunchucks hurt ghosts."

"Right," Donatello grumbled, turning and facing the darkness ahead. He hesitated at the line of salt, and it seemed like such a thin, fragile barrier against the darkness. Squaring his shoulders, he deliberately stepped over the line. When nothing happened, he gave a shaky breath and squared his shoulders.

"Okay," Donatello said. "Let's go get my laptop, get out, and get back."

Constantly checking over his shoulder, Michelangelo followed, wishing that the river's rumbling didn't drown out so much sound. Like the previous lair, they'd grown accustomed to the water rushing below and learned to tune it out. Not that he wanted to hear the slightest creak of a door, the whisper of dead skin creeping across steel- He squirmed in his shell. Enough thinking about that.

Down the dark hallway, he wondered why they hadn't left a light on near the stairs and decided that if they managed to get the laptop without any trouble, he'd risk walking down the long corridor, past several open doors where ghosts could pop out, to turn on the switch. The kitchen lights didn't go very far, fading into shadow only a few feet beyond the salt. Donatello switched on a flashlight that gave them a surprisingly wide path in the gloom, and Michelangelo flicked on each separate light that they passed. The water plant had old lights, tubular industrial bulbs with LEDs that had yellowed with age, and each had a solid grid of steel around them to protect them from being smashed. With each one he turned on, the path ahead felt that much darker.

"It never seemed so pitch black before," Michelangelo whispered.

"I usually keep the lights off," Donatello said. "So the some meter reader doesn't notice the drain on power this place makes. But...I think a couple bulbs burned out overnight, too."

Sure they did, Michelangelo thought. Very conveniently burned out.

When they reached the lab, ascending the short steps one by one, they found the door swung wide open. Donatello shifted the flashlight to his left hand and kept the beam trained on the doorway as if it was a charm to drive out ghosts.

"Follow me up and stay in the doorway," Donatello said over his shoulder. "Keep a lookout, okay."

"Sure," Michelangelo nodded, sparing a glance down the corridor behind them. If he did see a ghost, what would they do? Run, probably. But if the ghost was between them and the kitchen?

Inside the lab, the air was still, painfully quiet. The light switch sounded like a shot. As silent as they were, they heard their every step, heard Donatello's hands sweep the desk, pulling out the printer cord, the speaker cord, the mouse cord, yanking out the power cord and then folding it into the half-closed laptop. A dusty case stood on the floor against the table, and Donatello brought it up and stuffed the laptop in.

"What else should I grab?" Donatello whispered, mostly to himself. "I don't want to make a second trip."

"Um..." Michelangelo scanned the room. "Recorder if you got it. Camera. Uh..."

In his heart, thumping painfully with adrenaline, he knew they were taking too long. He couldn't see every nook and cranny—tables covered with motor parts, test tubes and plastic bottles on another, steel cabinets with their doors half open—each hidden spot a potential trap.

"Okay," Donatello said, breathing deep as if he'd run a mile.

There was a camera on the floor against the far cabinet, and with a single minded purpose he moved toward it, bent and grabbed it. The cabinet door opened a crack, groaning as it moved. Paralyzed, Donatello looked into the black space, the small sliver of darkness inches in front of his face. There was nothing, and yet there was movement, the wisp of something very real flickering and pushing the door wider. A familiar scent filled the room, stagnant water and rotten fruit, the smell of rain gutters filled with trash.

In the suddenly icy air, his breath misted white and the room felt like it was growing heavier. Dread and his damnable need to know held him in check, even luring him forward by inches-

"Don!"

Wrenching his head away, Donatello stumbled back and landed on his shell, crabbing backwards even as the lightbulb popped and the whole room went dark. He heard the cabinet door thrown open hard enough to slam the wall. He gave his eyes no time to adjust to the darkness; he scrambled to his feet and ran, scooping up his computer case on the way, feeling something heaving behind him. Was he underwater? He ran too slow, too slow-Something grabbed his hand and he yelped until he realized it was his little brother pulling him forward and out of the lab.

Michelangelo slammed the door shut behind himself, leaping the steps and landing beside Donatello in a roll so that he lost no time coming to his feet in a dead run. Halfway down the corridor, Michelangelo chanced a quick look back. The door shuddered, shaking violently on its hinges. And then the lab lay still again and the nearest light bulb blinked out. As did the next light bulb. And then the next, a wave of darkness advancing steadily on them with a growing sense of pressure, a mounting weight pushing down on him.

"Don't stop!" Donatello yelled, one hand grabbing at Michelangelo's shell. "Come on!"

Another bulb went out as Michelangelo ran after him, and all around him, the edges of the darkness rushed closer as the light seemed to retreat away. Ice touched the back of his neck, the faintest whisper of breath in his ear. Words formed just behind his head, it wanted light. The kitchen and the table appeared like a glowing oasis, with Raphael standing at the edge of the salt line waving at them frantically. Donatello leapt over the line and then turned, one hand out toward him.

"It's right behind you!" Raphael yelled.

"What is?" Michelangelo called back, but he was moving so fast that he was at the kitchen before Raphael could answer.

As he crossed over the salt, the faint whisper became a clenched fist on the top of his shell, pulling back so that for a terrible moment he was dragging himself through the air, fighting to get forward over the line. Even as he reached out, a cold small hand seized his ankle, his belt, his upper arm, dozens of hands yanking him backwards-

Raphael grabbed his outstretched hand and pulled him in, and together they stumbled across the floor in a heap. For several seconds, Michelangelo lay on top of him, gasping for breath, clutching at his big brother. Raphael pulled them a little farther from the line, arms tight around Michelangelo, but his grip soon relaxed and he sat up, forcing his brother up with him.

"What was it?" Michelangelo asked, craning his neck as he looked back. "What'd you see?"

"I couldn't really see anything," Raphael said softly. "Just the light's going off. It was right up against you. You were disappearing into the darkness."

The darkness around them was absolute—every light had been shut off save for the one bulb safe in their circle. Michelangelo squeezed his eyes tight. No sunlight reached down here. It was like being buried in a giant grave.


	5. Chapter 5

With the feeling that his head was stuffed with cotton, Michelangelo opened his eyes slowly, looking away from even the weak kitchen light. As he reluctantly sat up, moving his body like a heavy weight, he squinted and pulled at the blanket, shivering despite the warm air. There was a vague sense of anticipation, as if he was waiting for something to happen, the soft eye of the storm before the cold rain and wind hit.

Across from him, two siblings sat at the table. Donatello had plugged the laptop into the wall socket and now stared at the screen, only his eyes and the occasional tap of the mouse breaking the stillness. Beside him, Leonardo leaned forward on the table, head in his hands, breathing hard. Each muscle was taut, standing out under his skin like wires, and only after several seconds did he begin to fumble at the remaining book, cracking it open.

Michelangelo felt a little tension leave his shoulders. His big brother might push himself too hard, but it was a relief seeing him active again. They'd all been slow and sore in the morning, beaten and battered by training and fights, and a little weary stiffness wasn't alarming. He climbed out of bed and stood by the table, looking over Leonardo's shoulder.

Up close, however, was a different story. Leonardo's breaths were tight and measured, and he moved as if underwater, carefully balanced as if afraid he'd fall over, braced against the table. When he noticed he was being stared at, he managed a shaky and faint smile.

"It's all right," Leonardo breathed. "It's not hurting me, not really."

It did little to reassure Michelangelo, who felt a twinge in his heart. His older brother hated to show pain. Had he even noticed the attack on Donatello and Michelangelo? There was a disturbing numbness in his eyes, a feeling that only part of him was awake.

Michelangelo touched Leonardo's shoulder, but then he also sat on top of the table and grabbed a book. They could only help him by investigating and forming a new plan.

Donatello's gazed flicked toward Michelangelo, then back to the screen, then out towards the vast darkness around them. His hand trembled, and he made himself stop and take several deep breaths, eyeing the darkness to make sure nothing was coming over the salt. How much faith he put in that thin white line. But it seemed to hold, and while there were rules he could count on, he could let himself think about things besides the ghosts outside.

More to steady his own nerves, Donatello covered Leonardo's hand with his own, looking over him.

"You gonna be okay?" Donatello asked. "You look like you should be asleep."

"Just...very bad karma," Leonardo said in halting bursts. "It'll get better when we get rid of them."

"How does bad karma do that?" Raphael asked, coming in from the kitchen. He pushed Michelangelo off the table and sat down with the others. "Is that like a ghost attack?"

"Like the movie Ju-On," Leonardo said, missing how Michelangelo mouthed 'The Grudge' to Raphael. "There aren't curses, just...bad karma."

"Bad karma that can think," Donatello said disbelievingly, scoffing despite the reassuring squeeze he gave Leonardo before taking his hand back to type. "Was that shadow I saw bad karma, too?"

"'Shadow'?" Michelangelo echoed, and though he leaned against the table, he found himself too fidgety to sit. "Is that what you saw?"

"I saw something in the cabinet," Donatello said, then paused halfway through scrolling down a folder. "It was human shaped. Y'know, maybe someone died down here—a drowning victim maybe. Or a murder. It had to be something that left a kind of strong emotion."

"Wait," Raphael said. "You're getting way ahead of us."

"Maybe Asian ghosts are all about karma," Donatello continued, not wanting to kick Leonardo while he couldn't argue. "But this is New York. That means ghosts we're familiar with—angry, violent ghosts that were probably buried here somewhere."

"Then explain the altar," Leonardo said, but he gave up before Donatello said anything and instead put his head down on the table. "Damn, head hurts."

"Like I said, it is New York," Donatello said. "There's plenty of people from Chinese descent. Whoever dealt with the ghost down there tried to seal her up the only way he knew how."

Leonardo closed his eyes. "Makes sense, I guess."

"But you're not convinced," Michelangelo said.

"Doesn't matter, actually." Leonardo didn't move as he felt a blanket drop over his shoulders, didn't argue as Michelangelo dragged a chair close and sat holding him. "Don, how'd...how'd you know to use salt?"

The question made Donatello look up from his monitor. "What, seriously? Everyone knows about salt."

"Pretend I don't," Leonardo said, and even his weariness didn't hide his irritation.

"Uh, sorry. It's just when I was younger, I looked up magic to see if it was like science. The only thing I got out of it was that circles can keep things out, and salt was good for that." Donatello sighed, exasperated at himself. "But that was it. Everything else kept contradicting each other or just being folklore. There's no rhyme or reason to any of it. Salt's the only thing anyone seemed to agree about."

He focused back on his laptop, typing in a long searchstring and opening it to a new tab. "So I'm gonna try looking up stuff that happened here in the past. Not just the environmental problems. Maybe there's a clue about who these girls are."

"And if they've got unfinished business?" Michelangelo asked. "That's what they call it, right?"

"Something like that," Donatello said. "So let's see...um, this could take awhile," he said, glancing at them over his monitor. When none of them moved, he added "Like at least an hour or two. You might wanna get some rest."

"You're the only game in town," Raphael said, and he waved at the books still littering the table. "I ain't about to start reading these. I took one look at Leo's notes and I went cross-eyed."

"No comment," Leo mumbled around a pained smirk.

"Smart ass," Raphael said. "That's it, I'm putting you back to bed."

"No, not yet," Leonardo said, and he pushed himself straight in his chair although his eyes were still closed. "I only had a few...two more books to do."

"Why?" Donatello asked, though he didn't stop typing. "They're just folklore."

"So's Sun Tzu," Leonardo said. "All tactics is just...folklore."

"So how come I knew about the salt and you didn't?" Donatello asked. "Isn't it in the books?"

"Actually, it was in the set I was reading," Michelangelo said. "I was doing the English stuff. Leo always reads the Japanese stuff."

"And..." Leonardo opened his eyes, staring at the pile of books before choosing one and very deliberately dragging it close. His notebook still lay in the middle like a bookmark. "It doesn't matter why they're here. We just need to get rid of them."

"There's always a reason for things," Donatello said. "I'll find it eventually. But you guys should really get to sleep. You only got an hour or so."

"I'm okay now," Michelangelo said, grabbing one of his books. "Leo's right—we should finish up this part. It's only a couple more I need to read, too."

"And I'm not getting back to bed yet," Raphael said. "I've been there long enough. I'ma go make dinner...it's dinnertime, right?"

"I think so," Michelangelo said. "We salted the kitchen, yeah?"

"And the bathroom," Donatello said.

"Gonna be nerve-wracking going in there alone," Raphael said. "Ain't it always the way in horror flicks, the ghost popping up in the bathroom mirror?"

"There's not funny anymore," Michelangelo said. "What if one reached up through the toilet?"

"So piss in the shower," Raphael said unsympathetically.

As Raphael got up, Michelangelo stuck his tongue out at him.

* * *

By the time Raphael finished cooking, Michelangelo shut his book with a theatrical sigh and started stacking all the books scattered on the table. He hesitated at collecting Leonardo's piles, but his big brother motioned with a faint nod that he could, scratching the last note in a messy scrawl completely unlike his usual handwriting.

"Looks like you're learning how to write all over again," Michelangelo said, taking his pen as well.

"Feels like it," Leonardo breathed, slumping in the chair to rest. "But I'm feeling better now."

Michelangelo didn't respond, and Leonardo glanced up knowing he'd see his little brother watching him skeptically. Michelangelo smiled to take the edge off his obvious disbelief.

"You look like you haven't slept for a week," Michelangelo said.

"Then I must be better," Leonardo said. "I felt like I was dead for a week."

"Not funny." Across the table, Donatello glanced over his laptop. "You're gonna eat and go to bed, got it?"

Leonardo nodded once, then breathed out as if even that was too much effort. "Sure. What about you? We've been up awhile now."

"It's almost nine," Donatello said, spotting the time on his laptop. "I can keep working for awhile—"

"No," Leonardo said, still unmoving, looking as if he was talking in his sleep. "You can't work yourself to exhaustion. Can't afford that."

"Then what?" Donatello demanded. "We go to sleep? Take a nap surrounded by ghosts?"

"Yes," Leonardo answered. "Take turns keeping watch, but we have to sleep."

Donatello frowned but didn't argue. If he wanted to work through the night, Leonardo was in no shape to stop him. He'd just wait for his brother to pass out and then take the first watch.

Dinner came and went in near silence broken only by Donatello's steady typing and mouse clicks. Raphael had simply dumped several cans of chicken soup in a large pot and brought it to a boil, serving an equal amount to everyone except Leonardo, who received his portion in an oversized cup with a handle to make it easier on him. None of them took long to eat, used to devouring hot food fast for fear of an attack. Donatello received a cup of coffee that he nodded thanks to Raphael for but didn't mention it out loud, sure that his older brother hadn't noticed. Two brothers planning a little mutiny, then.

"Anything so far?" Michelangelo asked moments later, pausing as he took the dishes back.

"A couple things, but I'm not sure," Donatello said. "I need to check a few more names before I think I'm not just on a wild goose chase." He leaned back from the computer for a moment and finished the coffee in one last gulp. "You guys should get some rest. I'll take the first watch."

Grimacing, Raphael shook his head. "I'm not leaving you alone like that. We'll both watch, then you get to bed and Mikey'll watch with me. Then you and him."

Donatello gave Raphael a look, but this wasn't Leonardo, now breathing deep with his head pillowed on the table. Raphael's mouth pressed in a firm line, promising no backing off. Michelangelo came between them, carefully rousing their sibling and coaxing him off to bed, and Donatello and Raphael kept their gazes locked.

"You know I don't need much sleep," Donatello whispered when he was sure Leonardo was out of hearing. "And I have coffee. Thanks, by the way."

"A few hours won't make any difference," Raphael said, "and I'm not gonna risk you gettin' a fuzzy head when it counts. Keep working. I'll let you know when to get to bed."

Donatello looked down at his laptop, then back up at Raphael. "I don't want to sleep."

"Don—" Raphael grumbled.

"Please," Donatello said, his voice softer. His fingers hesitated over the keys, then lightly set down on the home row. "Raph. I don't want to sleep."

Oh. Raphael breathed out and leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling for several seconds as he considered his reply. He wasn't practiced at being considerate, and admitting he was afraid had cost Donatello something in pride. He didn't want to rub salt in that wound.

"Nothing's gonna get us," Raphael said with all the weight of a promise. "Nothing can get in here, and then when we're all rested and Leo's back up to speed, we'll get rid of these things somehow. Okay?"

Grimacing, Donatello met his look. "It almost got Leo. It almost got Mikey twice if you count the dream."

Raphael shook his head. "Nope. We got each other's shells. I got Mikey, and I got Leo before, too. And I'll get you too if I gotta, okay?"

Donatello, smiling despite his nerves, nodded once and turned back to the laptop. The conversation was awkward. He'd rarely been so completely wrong about something, and the mistake had nearly cost him two brothers.

"This gonna take awhile?" Raphael asked, leaning over to see the screen. "I saw the same article open a couple hours ago."

"I have like twenty tabs open," Donatello said with a self-conscious smile. "Gimme a few. I still have to read these and figure things out."

"Sure."

Raphael glanced over his shoulder. Michelangelo had left the dishes in the sink and curled up with Leonardo, letting him rest against his shoulder. In the small nest of blankets, they looked absurdly young...Raphael considered, one eye half-closing. Not young. Vulnerable. They'd all felt too out in the open after Splinter's death, as if surviving on their own without their father meant they were truly exposed. Rarely venturing above ground anymore, they had to slowly grow accustomed to living without a safety net, and their arguments had mellowed when they realized how dangerous fracturing their family was in a fight.

He leaned back, fanning himself with a stack of Donatello's papers. Leonardo might have been leader, but they all felt the weight of keeping the family safe. Out of teenage emotion grew deep, almost desperate love and nothing was going to drive them out of this sanctuary, especially not a couple of spooks.

"One good thing tonight," he said, more to himself than Donatello. "At least there's a breeze. Gets so damn hot down here."

Except the air was not so hot tonight, didn't prickle on his skin. In fact, the closer he drew to the line of salt, the colder the room felt. He even wondered if he should get a blanket to stay warm, but his pride only let himself retrieve one for Donatello, dropping it over his shoulders and gratified when his brother pulled it more comfortably around himself.

The river must be running faster, he thought, but the current isn't nearly as loud as usual.

When his breath misted in the air, however, he realized that something was wrong. The cold lingered at the edge of the salt circle, not a cool sunny breeze but a wind that carried the stench of stagnant water and old blood.

"Don..." he said lowly, coming backwards until he bumped into the table. He couldn't bring himself to look away from the darkness, expecting something to appear any second.

"Don't acknowledge it," Donatello said, not lifting his head. "Do me a favor and get another cup of coffee?"

"'Don't acknowledge it'?" Raphael glanced sideways at him. "What the hell?"

"You're just giving them strength if you do," Donatello said and met his look. "Coffee, please?"

"...sure." Raphael watched the shadows until he was in the kitchen, putting the tea kettle on to boil and making a quick cup of instant coffee. With the walls muffling the sound of the river, the rest of the noises around him sounded too loud. Putting the spoon in the cup sounded like shouting, pouring the water sounded like the river outside. He made himself breathe so that he couldn't hear himself, and on the outside of the walls, the tapping sounded more like banging on a tin pan.

What was that annoying tapping? Raphael had thought it was one of Donatello's machines in the lab—the sound was faint enough, barely rising over the water, but it wasn't rhythmic and it didn't stay in one place. At first softly striking the spot behind the refrigerator, the tapping slid along the edge of the floor, tapping behind cabinets, behind the sink, coming around and feeling out the walls behind the oven.

Raphael quietly put his hand out, grabbing the jar of salt still lying out, and took the step to the oven. Screwing up his courage, he looked over the top of it, then breathed out in relief. Michelnagelo and Donatello, whichever of them had lined this room, had taken the time to pour a line behind the oven, behind all the appliances and anywhere they could get salt to pile up. He didn't want to chance opening a cabinet, but he felt a little more assured that whatever was outside testing the kitchen wouldn't be able to get inside.

The tea whistled, startling him. With a huff, he poured out two coffees and brought them to the table, footing the kitchen door closed behind himself.

Closing the door meant losing a little light. Donatello raised an eyeridge and wordlessly sipped from his cup.

"The thing we're not acknowledging," Raphael said, sarcastically drawling the word, "is looking for weak spots in the walls."

Refusing to reply, Donatello continued to type. Raphael leaned back in the chair, putting his feet up on the table, and watched the computer screen's light flicker on the ceiling. Usually enough light played off the river's surface that it reflected around the floors and walls, golden spiderwebs floating in an invisible breeze, but tonight everything was black, and they were safe inside a small white bubble floating on the surface.


	6. Chapter 6

Living underground meant that his hearing expanded, learning the different sounds of the lair. The river washed in from the large pipes against the far wall, spilling into the reservoir beneath them and coalescing on the other side of the cavernous room, filtered through the screens at the foot of the wall. That there were more pipes and culverts they simply took for granted, gathering in the thick depths and swirling the air around.

Leonardo was beginning to hate this home. When he first discovered the place, the water had felt like chi, reassuring and buoyant, life energy moving around them like a shield or a path. Now it felt a trap of cold, sharp knives only inches away, and he regretted bringing his siblings here. Of all the underground hiding spots to find, he had to go and find the haunted one.

He sat up, wincing as his headache flared. With a concerted effort, he forced himself to take long, measured breaths, soothing the pain, and he spared a moment to sit crosslegged, eyes closed, hands casually on his legs. Slowly the pain faded, sliding away with practiced ease.

"Feeling better?" Michelangelo asked, sipping coffee at the table.

Leonardo considered. The humiliation of being so weak galled him, and probably would continue to gnaw at the back of his head for a long time, but physically?

"Yeah, I'm good. Just a little sore still, no worse'n after practice."

Relief washed over Michelangelo. "Thank God. We were really worried for awhile."

"Just bad karma," Leonardo sighed. "Or bad chi."

"Tch," Donatello said, not sparing a look over his laptop. "Chi. Right. Let me know when you pull off a kamehameha."

"Don?" Leonardo frowned as he got up, the stiffness of laying down for so long slow to work out of his joints. "Did you stay awake all night?"

"Nah," Donatello said. "I got a few hours between Raph and Mikey."

"That's it?" Leonardo said.

"Couldn't keep him asleep," Raphael said, coming from the kitchen with two cups that he plopped down on the table. "Come on, he found some interesting stuff."

Intrigued, Leonardo got up and went to the table, opting to stand behind Donatello and lean on his brother's shell. As usual, a dozen tabs were open on his monitor and the open page showed an old mimeographed report with faded purple lettering. Leonardo leaned a little harder than he meant to, resting on Donatello's shoulder, and felt his brother reach up and touch his hand.

"You sure you don't need more rest?" Donatello murmured. "I'm the one who's got coffee for blood. All you've got is green tea."

"I'll survive," Leonardo said with a soft chuckle. "What'd you find?"

"Subject shift, subject shift," Donatello smirked, but he pointed to a line in the paper. "I had to find an online storage database, sneak through a couple passwords, and search through a bunch of years of old reports before I found the folder on this place. And then I read through a bunch of work orders and status updates before I found the interesting stuff, so when this is all over, I have earned us all going for ice cream, okay health nut?"

Leonardo paused, giving him a long look, then sighed. "Only if Raph agrees to hit McDonalds, too. God, I could go for fries and a coke."

"I'ma hold you to that," Raphael said over his coffee.

"Anyway," Donatello said. "Check it out. We don't have any deaths, but what we do have are disappearances."

"Disappearances?" Michelangelo echoed. "Like vanished?

"Like 'went in a room and never came back out'," Donatello said. "And check this out—I found a work order on the room Leo found. The door on it got stuck and never got fixed. It was just a maintenance closet, and then no one ever went inside again."

"Does it say why?" Raphael asked.

"No, but everything inside was left as is, and then they ordered the same parts over. No one went inside. And there's other things. The bottom floor kept flooding, even though they never found any leaks, so they eventually just sealed it up, too. And then even though the engines were underwater, the workers said they sometimes heard them trying to work, groaning against all that rust. I'll bet anything that wasn't the engines groaning." Donatello eagerly scanned the next lines, absorbed in the maintenance accounts.

Turning his head, Leonardo glanced at him from one eye.

"No bodies ever found?" he asked. "The workers we're assuming died could've been scared off and never come back."

"I don't think so," Donatello said, less interested about that than the strange mechanical issues. "I'm sure the ones who disappeared are dead. I googled one of their names and didn't find anything."

"Don't these places have water going all the time?" Michelangelo asked. "So they could just fall over the edge and that's it?"

Raphael nodded. "No one'd ever find 'em."

Leonardo frowned and didn't comment.

"Anyway," Donatello continued, "I got the human resources files, too. One of the workers got in trouble for putting up an altar in the kitchen. Maybe he's the same guy who put up that altar thing in the ghost room."

"Did it work?" Leonardo asked.

"...how would you be able to tell?" Donatello said in a flat voice, clearly humoring him. "It's magic."

"If no one disappeared," Leonardo said. "If things got better for awhile."

"Huh." Curious despite his skepticism, Donatello turned and clicked a notepad file open, scrolling down the hastily typed notes. "Seventy-three, seventy-four...huh. Yeah, actually. Looks like there was a period of about four months around 1974 where nothing bad happened. See, they had a sign—a hundred twenty three days without an accident. But then there was trouble with the asbestos in the walls, and they started cleaning up. And they lost two guys before they closed the place down."

"Damn," Leonardo sighed. "I don't suppose there's any picture of the altar?"

"No," Donatello said. "I think there was one, but it didn't get scanned in when they were doing the paperwork. But what's the point? It's not like we could build one."

"We wouldn't need to," Leonardo said. "The one downstairs had prayer charms on it, but they were all blurred. If only I could see the ones he used one more time..."

Aggravated by the missed opportunity, he sat down and tried to remember the handful he'd seen, but they'd all been streaked by flooding. It was like trying to give shape to twenty-year old spilled watercolors.

"Well..." Michelangelo said, an idea occurring to him. "Don, you said you can turn on our shellcells remotely, right? Didn't Leo drop his-"

"No!"

Both Raphael and Donatello snapped, all but rising out of their chairs. They glared at Michelangelo for suggesting it and then turned those glares on Leonardo as he obviously considered it.

"Absolutely not," Donatello said. "That thing nearly got you the first time-"

"We're not down there this time," Leonardo said. "And-"

"No arguing," Raphael said. "Not this time. You still ain't a hundred percent. You think I'ma let you even turn that thing on, then—then—"

"It's like giving it a way in," Donatello argued.

"This isn't the Ring," Leonardo said, far too used to giving orders than to back down to either of them.

"She won't climb up out of the screen. She might not even notice. Worst case scenario is we see her again. Actually, no..." He paused as he considered what had happened before, and his siblings fell silent, hoping he'd talk himself out of it. Long seconds passed as he stared out into the darkness.

"'No'?" Donatello prompted him.

"No," Leonardo said. "Worst thing is that I don't get a good look inside before she pops up. You guys got to see her. I never saw her, not really."

"And you're not going to," Raphael said, slamming his hand on the table. "You're supposed to be fearless, not stupid."

As soon as he'd said it, Leonardo winced and looked away. Across the table, Raphael did the same. Months had passed since their last real argument, and both of them struggled to clamp down on their emotions. This was no time for a fight. Raphael took a long breath to calm himself and shuddered as he exhaled.

"Just...no, okay? Just no." He sank back in his chair, still looking away.

"...okay," Leonardo said slowly, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms. "Then who'll look?"

Michelangelo and Donatello stiffened, caught between wanting to stop them and the old familiar feeling of having to tune out their brothers' fight. Donatello opened his mouth, then cut himself off and looked up at Raphael.

"No one," Raphael said softly. He met Leonardo's gaze and didn't apologize, knowing that would only irritate Leonardo more, but he wouldn't back down. "It's not an option."

"Then what?" Leonardo said. "We risk going out? Make a run for it?"

As if he'd pointed, they all couldn't help a quick flicker towards the shadows, now a wall so black that Raphael felt like he could have touched it. He frowned, brow creasing in thought.

"Well..." He glanced at the salt.

"There's no way," Leonardo said, reading his look. "You'd need a lot more than that, and you'd never keep a closed circle anyway."

"Then..." Raphael stood up and looked at the kitchen, the bathroom. The small circle of light that made up their dining space. All of their tools were in the lab, and their weapons, for all the good a staff or shuriken might do against a ghost, were in the practice room. Only Michelangelo, who'd been nervous after his nightmare, had brought his nunchucks, and Donatello's staff lay somewhere between the kitchen and the lab.

"We're trapped," Leonardo said, and his tone softened. He didn't need to antagonize his brother. "There's nothing else I can think of. Something down there in that altar room worked. I've got paper here. I can make omamori. But I don't know what the charms were."

"Why not?" Raphael muttered. "You were in there."

"Stupid surprise," Leonardo said, loathe to admit it. "I never expected to see something like that, and the pictures got my attention. The faces..."

He didn't complete the thought, and Raphael didn't press.

"Fine," Raphael said, standing straight as he came to a decision. "Don—"

"Raph, please no," Donatello started to argue, knowing it would do no good but trying anyway.

"We have to do it," Raphael said to him, then glanced at Leonardo again. "But I'll be the one to look through it."

"Raph," Michelangelo murmured. "You can't read Japanese that fast."

"Mikey..." Raphael growled.

"He's right," Leonardo said. "None of you can."

"Mikey can," Donatello said.

"Slowly," Leonardo countered. "If he concentrates. He's not fluent in it."

Raphael turned his attention to his little brother, his glare demanding an answer to his silent question. With a reluctant sigh, Michelangelo nodded.

"I just read manga," he said. "Novels, even websites give me a major headache. There's just so many ways to draw that stupid kanji and thousands of symbols, and you can make so many double meanings, and the calligraphy—"

"Okay," Raphael said, cutting him off. He sat down heavily in the chair, staring at his elder brother. "Okay. Fine. But we turn it off the second I say so. Hell, we'll throw the damn thing outside if we have to."

"Sure," Leonardo said, and he sat up quickly, looking at Donatello. "How do you-?"

"I'll do it," Donatello said as he took up the shellcell. He punched a few buttons, then turned it to face the ceiling. "You tell me when. If I see anything, and I mean anything, I throw it away, got it?"

Knowing better than to argue, Leonardo grabbed one of Donatello's papers, flipped it over on the back, and took one of his pens. With a deep breath, he leaned over the screen and nodded once.

Silence. Out of nervousness, Donatello missed the switch once, cursed and turned the shellcell on, then turned on the remote display. Despite their own fear, they all leaned a little closer.

At first there was static, then a dark screen with white lines flashing over it. Then three floors down and several rooms over, Leonardo's shellcell turned on, shining its own light into the room.

Scratch—and a hand clamped over Donatello's wrist.

With a startled gasp, Donatello reflexively tried to jerk the shellcell away, afraid that when he looked down he'd see...he blinked. Leonardo's hand crossing his body, pinning Donatello to the table, and his right hand scratching kanji blindly on paper.

"Goddammit," Donatello breathed, feeling his heart pounding in his throat. "Warn a guy..."

"Can you read any of that?" Raphael whispered. He turned his head, but the blurred charms on the wall were nothing more than watercolor smudges.

Leonardo didn't seem to hear. He bent down close, narrowing his eyes as he tilted his head, sounding out syllables as he drew a line, two lines, three—then scratched those out and drew the edges of a kanji and puzzled out the inside marks.

"Na...ma...ku..." He frowned and guessed at two lines, then nodded to himself and added another. "San manda...bara..."

Something toppled over. A wooden sound, heavy and unbalanced, that they heard down below even without the shellcell. The wooden bowl rolled past the screen and stopped somewhere out of sight.

"Can this take pictures?" Leonardo whispered.

"Not hooked up like this," Donatello breathed, unsure of where to look. At the screen, or into the darkness?

"Dammit," Leonardo whispered. "Ra...dan kan..."

"How the hell are you getting all that?" Raphael whispered. "There's nothing there."

"Outlines," Michelangelo whispered when Leonardo didn't answer. "The tops, the sides, the way the ink drips."

"There, I think I got one," Leonardo said, shoving the paper aside and sparing only a brief glance to see if the next page he grabbed was also blank. Then he was back staring at the screen, shaking his head in frustration. "Dammit. Dammit, I can't find another one."

"Then turn it off," Raphael said, about to grab the device.

"There!" Leonardo let go of Donatello's hand and put his other hand on the page, drawing a quick nine square grid and starting at the top, outlining the first character.

"Light."

Three turtles froze. Leonardo stared at the screen as if mesmerized, no longer guessing the strokes but simply drawing what he saw. In the room several floors down, something whispered again.

"Light...see your light..."

There was a hint of motion at the very bottom of the screen as if the static lines had come back. Then again, more static, as if the signal was coming through a bad electrical storm. The screen wobbled and turned as something knocked against it, and Leonardo cursed and turned, pushing Michelangelo a few inches as he angled with the screen.

"-ai jin rets-" Leonardo muttered. "Ai?"

"See your light."

A white hand landed on the screen, followed by the shriek of static and the roaring growl growing louder and louder as the shellcell shuddered. The screen went black and two dead, watery eyes looked out at all of them.

As if swatting a terrible bug, Donatello backhanded the shellcell so hard that it flew off the table and into the darkness.

There was no sound of it hitting the floor.


	7. Chapter 7

Amidst the sudden yells and scraping of chairs on the floor, Leonardo's mind calmly processed what he'd seen and what he needed to do.

If there was a ghost outside the circle, then either it could get in or it couldn't.

If it could get in, then they were dead since they didn't have their weaponry with them. In which case there was no point worrying.

If it couldn't get in, then Leonardo had time to make omamori, in which case he needed ink, a brush and paper. He had no brush, but he tore off the end of his mask and rolled it. Good enough.

He then stole Donatello's pen from the table and took it to the kitchen, ignoring his brother's indignant squawk and his younger siblings demanding to know what he'd seen and what he was doing. Michelangelo snapped up the scribbles and tried to sound out the messy kanji while Donatello looked over his shoulder, and Raphael followed his big brother inside.

"What the hell was that?" Raphael demanded, right at Leonardo's heels. "I hope you got what you needed 'cause ain't no way we're doing that again."

"I need a small bottle," Leonardo said. He leaned over the sink and began taking the pen apart until he had the ink well. "The smallest one we have."

With a disgusted look, Raphael slammed open a cupboard before he remembered that there might be something evil inside. But when he looked, there was nothing but the jumbled pile of plastic cups and plates tossed on top of each other. He took the smallest cup and offered it, then sighed and brought it over when he saw how Leonardo's hands were shaking.

"Is that fear?" he asked, standing flush beside him and putting the cup in the sink. "Or exhaustion?"

"I might have pushed a little too hard," Leonardo admitted, and his hands were steady enough to turn on the faucet. "But I got what we needed."

"You got all the symbols?"

"Didn't need to," Leonardo said. "I recognized them after a minute. Pretty common, actually. I just didn't think those would actually work."

He filled the cup only a third with water, then broke the ink well inside and pushed it under the surface, letting the ink soak out. Once the water was completely black, he took the pen pieces out and tossed them on the top of the sink.

"So you're the one who keeps leaving crap there," Raphael muttered, taking the pieces and throwing them away. "Is it so hard to put things in the trashcan?"

"You moved it to the other corner," Leonardo said. "It's a pain."

"You went five miles across town once to pick up a bag you dropped," Raphael said with some incredulity. "You can't take two steps to the other side of the room?"

"It's four steps," Leonardo said. "And if the top was open, we could just toss things from here."

"I swear, you're as bad as Mikey sometimes." Raphael grimaced and looked at what Leonardo was doing. "Homemade calligraphy?"

"Something like that. Could you tear out the back pages from some of the books?" Leonardo took the ink and turned around, then grabbed Raphael's shoulder to steady himself as the floor spun.

"Sure," Raphael said, taking the makeshift inkwell from him. "I'll even get you all the way to the table again. Wouldn't want you exerting yourself. It's more than five steps, I think."

"Seven," Leonardo mumbled before he could help himself.

Raphael gave him a look. "Are you serious?"

"I measured the floor plan out once," Leonardo said, trying to defend himself.

"So did Don." Raphael shook his head with a sigh. "He's got a map, for God's sake..."

Leonardo didn't respond, resting against Raphael until he could sit down again. Donatello was still standing, watching the darkness as if he expected something to crawl out.

To his surprise, Michelangelo had already set several books on the table and was carefully tugging out the blank pages. As Leonardo eased back into his chair, he watched his brother fold the pages in half to make long strips. His little brother's hands worked smoothly, tearing the old paper with a light touch and making a neat pile. He looked down at his own hands and frowned, and pushed his palms flat to steady the shaking.

"Damn..." he murmured.

Michelangelo looked up with wide eyes. "What?"

"You're gonna have to do the kanji," Leonardo said. "I can tell you what to draw, but..."

"I get it," Michelangelo said, spotting his brother's hands. "You've done enough for while. Uh, you can show me how to do some of the kanji, right?"

"Sure," Leonardo nodded. "But you probably already know them. Rin pyo to sha kai jin-"

"Retsu zai zen," Michelangelo completed with a growing smile. Then he frowned. "Wait, seriously?"

"What?" Donatello asked, turning around. "What's so special about those?"

"It's..." Michelangelo tilted his head. "It's a real prayer, but they put it in movies. Well, I guess it's like where you have that same prayer over and over. What is it, the one that goes like 'valley of death and forgive us our sins'. They put it in tons of horror flicks, right? Same deal with this."

"It's the kuji-in," Leonardo said. "It's just a prayer."

"It calls up some protection," Michelangelo said. "Literally. Tells spirits to come fight for you and make a line. Kinda like the salt, I guess."

"But how'd you know it?" Donatello said. "Does that mean we didn't have to do that trick with the camera?"

"We had to do it," Leonardo said firmly. "I never would've thought those actually worked, not if we hadn't seen it. It's like...it's like using a nursery rhyme, almost."

"It's in a bunch of anime," Michelangelo explained as Donatello looked more confused. "It's like Hollywood getting something right."

"Huh." Donatello looked skeptical but didn't argue. "So you know how to write it?"

"Leo does," Michelangelo said. "He'll show me."

"Actually..." Leonardo took Donatello's other pen, giving his brother a quick assurance that he wouldn't disassemble this one, and began sketching out the kanji in the margin of a book. He had to put his left hand over his right to minimize the trembling.

"Does it hurt?" Donatello asked.

"No," Leonardo said, deliberately focused on writing. "Just like after training too long."

In rough outlines, the kanji began to take form. A few characters took several strokes, and twice he had to stop and glance back at the hastily scrawled notes from the video.

"Can't remember?" Michelangelo asked.

"Trying to tell which character," Leonardo said. "I didn't get much of the retsu, and sometimes I forget which one's Chinese and Japanese. Or which one's the right one."

"Lemme guess," Raphael said. "One of those damn puns. You know, those are half the reason I quit trying to speak Japanese. I get confused with all the double meanings."

"S'great for poetry," Leonardo murmured, pausing to examine his work. After a moment he sighed, tilted his head and kept drawing. "It's okay. I have a hard time with them, too."

Over his shoulder, Michelangelo watched the rudimentary charm begin to take form. He opened his mouth, then hesitated. He couldn't ask his brother for more, not when Leonardo was so clearly struggling to hold himself together, but he wasn't sure that he'd remember exactly how to form each kanji. But as much as he didn't want to make his brother work even harder, Michelangelo also couldn't take the risk that it wasn't important.

"Leo?" he asked.

"Yeah?"

"Do...do I have to do each one perfect?" he said, then rushed to explain when all of them looked at him like he was insane. "Not like that! Not like that! I swear, I'll draw 'em right. It's just, do I have to do all the lines in order?"

"Ugh," Raphael said in disgust. "There's another reason not to learn how to write it. Thirty six strokes for one symbol..."

"They're not all that many." Leonardo replied to Raphael with only half a mind. With an unsure tilt of his head, he met Michelangelo's look. "Try, but...I don't think so. It's calligraphy. It always looks a little different. Just make sure the lines are all there."

"No prob," Michelangelo said, eager to make sure they all knew he'd give it his best effort. Worse than a screw-up getting them hurt was a screw-up because he was the impatient baby of the family.

When Leonardo finished, he popped the pen apart and broke the plastic over the makeshift inkwell, giving Michelangelo more to use. Donatello sighed in irritation and sat down, then reached underneath Leonardo's chair, grabbing the edge and dragging him flush against his side.

"Go to sleep," Donatello muttered. "You know, you wouldn't be in this mess if you didn't run off on your own."

"And if I hadn't, me and Mike would've been in there with her," Leonardo said, putting his head down and leaning against him. "It would've been a real fight, and I don't think we would've won."

None of them replied. Donatello grumbled under his breath as he returned to his laptop, studying the layout of their home to figure out how it worked. As Michelangelo worked, Raphael picked up one of the blank pages and tore it in neat strips.

Time passed. Occasionally they asked Donatello what time it was, but the numbers meant little. The lair was always pitch black. Occasionally they heard the phone ring in the bedroom, but with no way to reach it, the sound echoed through the metal corridors and died away in the corners, leaving only the susurration of the water, the touch of Michelangelo's brush on paper and Leonardo's faint breathing.

"Oh, crap..." Michelangelo suddenly sighed, leaning forward and lightly thumping his head on the table.

"What?" Donatello asked, standing up at his seat. "Is something wrong?

"Don..." Michelangelo sheepishly held up one of the omamori to his brother. "Could you do me a favor and just look these up on a google, make sure I got it right?"

After a second, they all groaned.

"Why the hell didn't I think of that?" Donatello muttered, taking it.

Raphael took a handful of paper strips, blowing on each to make sure the characters were dry, and made a pile. Across from him, Michelangelo took a breath and leaned back, shaking his hand out as he took a break.

"Probably 'cause it's weird and spooky," Raphael said. "And who looks up spooky stuff online?"

"It's my own fault," Michelangelo said, his voice muffled by the table. "I was so focused on the stuff Leo was doing that I didn't even think about it."

"Well..." Raphael said, watching their brother sleep. "Can't really blame him for forgetting."

"I can," Donatello snapped. After a few seconds, he handed the paper back. "Yeah, they're right. I swear, it's the second damn image on the search. Could've saved him a ton of grief."

"We'll tease him about it later," Raphael said, snatching the omamori before his little brother and examining it. "Not bad. How many you gonna do?"

"Many as I can," Michelangelo said. "I dunno how much it'll take. Some shows have the whole wall covered in these. Sometimes it's just one per window. Just make 'em and stick 'em up 'till the ghosts go away, I guess."

Raphael frowned. "Stick 'em up?"

"Yeah, like..." Michelangelo paused. "Crap. How the hell do they stick on things?"

"Are they like post-it notes?" Raphael asked.

"I don't know," Michelangelo said. He looked at Leonardo, but he was sound asleep under Donatello's arm. Donatello gave them a look before glancing back at the screen.

"Well, we'll ask when he wakes up," Raphael said. "How's your hand holding up?"

"I'm good," Michelangelo said. "Keep making more strips for me, huh?"

"Yeah, no prob."

Taking up another book, Raphael opened the back cover and lay the book down, pulling the blank page at the end as quietly as he could. When it was finally out, he folded it over several times, set it on the table and pressed his fingertips on each side, gingerly tearing it in a straight line.

He winced. Without them talking, the noise sounded as loud as yelling. Even Donatello was typing softly, and Leonardo was breathing quietly-

Raphael lifted his head. His older brother rarely made any noise at all, not even in his sleep. He listened closely, going so far as to put his hand on Leonardo's, and his brother opened his eyes and looked vaguely toward him, his sigh so slight as to be silent.

They all tensed. With Leonardo awake, the breathing was obviously not one of them. Donatello didn't look away from the monitor.

"Don't acknowledge it," he whispered.

"That's not working," Raphael breathed back.

When none of them replied, it was impossible not to listen. Raphael stood and went to the edge of the salt line, waving away Donatello's hissed warning, and stared out into the darkness. Deep, slow, the breathing came from only inches beyond his face, close enough that he should have felt it on his skin.

"It's as tall as me," Raphael said softly.

"Raph..." Michelangelo said, rising out of his chair. "Don't-"

"It's like it's right there," Raphael continued, leaning forward and squinting. "Like it goes dark right in front of-"

The ends of his mask lifted. Surprised, he watched the cloth dangle in front of his face for a moment, realizing that leaning forward had put the ends over the salt's edge just as the cloth tightened and jerked forward.

For one agonizing instant he kept his balance, his weight keeping him from stepping any farther, but the pull grew stronger and he had no leverage to pull himself back.

A firm hand at his waist yanked him awkwardly onto the floor. Raphael winced as his head smacked the steel, but it was his siblings' shouts that made him sit up on his elbows. As he struggled to focus, he saw the red blur of his mask floating through the air and the wide, startled eyes of his little brother as Michelangelo lay half in shadow, reaching toward him.

Raphael reached out, touching Michelangelo's hand just as his little brother's whole body was dragged impossibly fast into the darkness with little more than his sudden, sharp breath.


	8. Chapter 8

Raphael stopped breathing, frozen in place by shock. A blur of orange, no more than a flicker of his brother's mask, whipped in front of his eyes and then vanished, and his little brother was gone. From the darkness was nothing but silence. No cry, no slide of a shell on the floor. Not even a ghostly moan.

He didn't waste time figuring out what happened. Scrambling to his feet, he darted to the table and grabbed a handful of the paper charms that Michelangelo had painted. He heard Leonardo and Donatello saying something to him, shouting at him, but they sounded far away and underwater.

Back to the edge of the salt, and as Raphael raised the first charm, he suddenly realized that he didn't know how to make it work. He glanced at his siblings, but both of them had such blank looks that he figured they didn't know, either. Even Mikey hadn't...

Mikey.

"Hell, it's just a fancy post-it note anyway," Raphael muttered.

With a deep breath, he slammed the charm on the floor just beyond the white line and held still, gazing up around the dark space. A moment passed and nothing touched him. He took another and slid it farther along as if daring the ghosts to pick him off. Nothing.

"It actually works?" Leonardo whispered.

"Aw yeah," Raphael laughed breathlessly, slapping another down, then another, until he was leaning halfway out over the salt. "It's working!"

Funny how he could see the floor around the charms, as if they were glowing. Heartened, he went to put down another, then paused and looked back at his brothers.

"Where should I put them?" he asked.

Leonardo looked at Donatello, who was caught between his computer and the salt.

"Don, call Michelangelo's cell."

"But..." Donatello's hand went to his side, belatedly remembering that he'd smacked his shellcell into the darkness earlier. With a grimace, he looked around and spotted Raphael's shellcell under the table, and he knelt and grabbed it. Rather than dialing, he punched two keys.

After a second, the screen flashed with static and scrolling lines with high pitched electric screech. It varied in pitch, screaming higher, then faded low enough that they heard panicked breathing on the other side. The static cleared and the screen stopped flickering, showing a black and white image of Michelangelo, wide eyed, lying sideways.

"Oh my god oh my god oh my god," Michelangelo whispered, clutching the device closer as he pushed himself up to a sitting position. "Oh my god oh my god-"

"Mikey!" Donatello yelled. "Mikey, calm down-"

"Oh my god oh my god-"

"They won't stay gone for good," Leonardo said, pushing close since he couldn't look over Donatello's shoulder. "Can you see where you are?"

"Oh my god oh my...what? What?" Michelangelo brought the shellcell back up. "Whaddaya mean they won't stay gone? I'm in the dark and those things are out there-"

"Your omamori work," Leonardo said. "The charms work."

"Oh, that's great," Michelangelo said, sarcasm deepening in his voice. "But those are over there, and I'm over...wherever the hell I am!"

He paused, struggling to bring his own breathing under control, and curled up a little tighter.

"Dammit, I swear I can hear 'em," Michelangelo said through his whimper. "They're right next to me."

"Put your back against a wall," Leonardo told him, "and repeat the kuji-in over and over."

"The rin pyo thing?" Michelangelo asked as he scooted back, taking a deep breath as his shell hit the steel wall. He looked in all directions, unable to see past the small square of light from the shellcell, then looked back at them. "Um...um...oh god, I can't remember—Leo, I can't remember—"

"Rin pyo to sha-" Leonardo started.

"-kai jin retsu zai zen," Michelangelo finished. "Okay, got it. Rin pyo to sha kai jin retsu zai zen."

He said it a handful of times, and as nothing attacked him, he nodded and swallowed once. "Yeah, that even feels better. You...you'll come get me soon, yeah?"

"We're on our way," Donatello promised. "Just keep that up."

"Rin pyo to...sha...kai jin..."

"And keep the cell on," Leonardo said. "So we can hear each other."

"S-sure...retsu zai zen..."

Donatello stared into the screen for several seconds, then closed his eyes in relief and clipped the shellcell to his belt, listening to the sound of his brother reciting the same chant over and over. With tired eyes he looked up at his older brother.

"Now what?"

Hesitating, Leonardo glanced from Donatello to Raphael, who had placed more of the omamori charms in a line out into the darkness.

"Where is he?" Raphael asked. "He's gotta be in here still, right?"

Not answering, Leonardo forced himself to slow down and think. The ghosts had rules that they had to obey, but the rules were conflicting, impossible to figure out. Why did salt work when water didn't? Water was used for purification, so why were there ghosts here at all? Because water housed spirits. He knew that—it was basic folklore. Only...

He looked at the charms again, then picked one up and went to the white line. Kneeling at the edge, he carefully put his hand over and onto the floor, planting the omamori firmly on steel.

A cold hand slid across his wrist, missing only because he was already jerking back. Water dripped down his fingers and icy breath misted over his skin, seeping straight into his bones. He shivered and stood. Only inches away, something stood up with him. Although he couldn't see her, he felt her watching, felt the wrongness and the dead air twisting around in currents that shouldn't have been there.

"Whoa..." Raphael gasped, then looked around to make sure nothing was coming towards him. "The post-it thing didn't work for you."

Leonardo counted off in his head. They'd come as far as they could with thinking logically, stumbling over half-solutions and lucky clues. With Michelangelo outside, they'd run out of time.

And it wasn't like he was doing anything useful hiding inside their safe haven. He took a deep breath, held it, exhaled.

"Ten..." he said to himself.

Four steps from the kitchen wall to the sink. Seven to the table. Three to the hall. Then five to the bedroom door. The dojo would have been better, but that would've been twenty steps. Once he got to the bedroom, it was a quick pivot and two steps along the wall. Ten steps in the darkness. It might have been a mile.

But he was fast. Not as strong as his brothers, not as tall, but light and fast. And "fearless."

Raphael froze when he saw the look in his eyes. Years living together meant that Raphael knew the look Leonardo got whenever he decided to do something self-sacrificially reckless and stupid. Raphael came to his feet and lunged at him, spilling charms along the floor. The paper strips fluttered out like falling light and Leonardo didn't waste the opportunity. Head down, crouching as he ran along the omamori, he tucked and rolled into the darkness, came back up in a blind run.

One step—two—

The ends of his mask pulled tight as something grabbed the trailing cloth. He let his head snap back and the mask slid off, buying him time.

Three—four—

Ice crept up the back of his neck and a wet hand clamped down on his shoulder. Twisting around in a sharp spin, he had a brief glimpse of the bright golden kitchen and his brothers frantic inside, and something black blocking them from view.

Five—

He yanked free and stumbled, losing count. Hand out, he found the wall. Just two more, two or three more.

Six—seven—eight—nine—

He heart dropped out of his chest. Where was it? Where was the—?

His shoulder slammed into the doorframe, hard enough to make him feel sick, and he stumbled again, turning right into the bedroom.

And jerked to a halt. The darkness grabbed his wrist, slid up his arm, pulling with enough strength that Leonardo was sure it could wrench his arm out of his socket. With his other hand, he grabbed at the nightstand and leaned hard to the left, struggling just to stand. In a moment he'd be sent sprawling and then the terrible dragging, the long helpless flight into nothingness.

No! Two steps. It was there, right there—he was too damn close to hang on without trying. Blind, his thoughts eaten up by panic, he let go of the wall and put his hand out, relying on pure body memory. He couldn't see but he always put it in the same place every day, he never even looked anymore when he set it down.

His fingers closed satisfyingly on the hilt of his sword.

Yanked as if he weighed nothing, he fell sidelong on the floor, then felt the flat steel sliding underneath him as if he was falling down a cliff. In the time it took his thumb to unlatch the sheath and slip the sword from the sheath, he'd gone down a handful of steps and slammed into something that left lights flashing in his head.

There was no thought of technique. With nothing but mindless practice behind his attack, he swung at somewhere an inch above his hand and drew the blade, slicing down.

The pull on his arm vanished. Suddenly free, Leonardo turned on his front and pushed himself up, tilting when his right arm buckled under his weight. Painfully gathering his legs underneath him and getting back on his feet, he shifted the sword in his left hand and clasped his right hand weakly over it.

Something charged from behind. There was no sound, no hiss or sharp cry, just the rush of cold air and a terrible jolt to his senses, and he brought the katana around as he turned, drawing it with a much more calculated and measured cut.

A high pitched scream drove him a step back, a splash, and then nothing.

He wasn't breathing, straining to hear the tiniest whisper, and he was startled at how rattled his breath sounded to his own ears, how loud it sounded in the silence. But the air felt clearer, more like a normal night and less like they were buried alive.

A soft glow came from somewhere below. At first he thought it was a ghost, but when his eyes adjusted, he recognized the shape of the light, the color, and the shape of the shadows around it. With his sword at the ready, he eased down the ramp, rounding the next short set of steps and leaning against the railing, probably the same railing he'd been knocked against.

He knew where he was, though he rarely came this way. There wasn't any reason to take the ramp down to the water's edge, and closer to the river meant slippery steel and rusty bolts. Cold spray splashed up from the waves, chilling him to the bone, and played havoc with his senses. Hyperaware of the empty space around himself, he didn't think he could judge another attack if he was shivering so badly.

"–restu zai zen...rin pyo to—"

"Mikey," Leonardo whispered, kneeling down.

"Leo? Oh my god Leo—"

Michelangelo threw his arms around Leonardo, holding him tight. So wet that he dripped, his soft whispers felt like icicles creeping along Leonardo's shoulder.

"I thought I was gonna die," Michelangelo breathed. "I thought for sure this time—always knew it'd be in the dark all alone—"

No time for reassurances, though. Leonardo was all business, too afraid to waste time when they needed to get back home. He'd felt less isolated on alien planets than here, scant feet from the kitchen.

"Don't stop chanting," Leonardo whispered back. "I don't know how this works, okay? Keep chanting, and we'll get back."

"Y-yeah, I should keep it up," Michelangelo said, nodding, less to Leonardo than himself. "Rin...pyo to...Leo, my legs really hurt. Sho kai..."

"My other arm's useless," Leonardo said, turning slightly. "Lean on me."

Putting one arm over Leonardo's shoulders, Michelangelo hugged him close and did his best to carry his own weight, but he was still several inches taller and could have toppled both of them. Awkwardly favoring one leg, Michelangelo put his head down and tried not to jostle his brother each time he took a quick step, dragging his other leg behind him.

"Leo, is that you?" Raphael said, his voice thin on the shellcell. "Mikey, is he with you? Can you hear me?"

"We're here," Leonardo said as they maneuvered up the steps. "And we're coming. Don't come after us. It'll just be worse if you got attacked, too."

He briefly considered trying to jump the railing, but they'd only end up collapsed on the other side. Better to take the time to go around.

"Where are you?" Raphael asked.

"Steps down to the water," Leonardo said. "Anything happening on your end?"

"I don't think so," Donatello said. "Raph's still putting the omamori down, but he's almost run out."

Up to the next set of steps, and then finally back on the main floor. Both Leonardo and Michelangelo paused, looking up at the kitchen light as if to make sure it was really there, that their siblings were watching for them. And then Raphael and Donatello both looked right at them and broke into smiles.

"Holy crap," Raphael said. "I can see you."

"Like you're in a spotlight," Donatello said.

In that moment, he forgot himself and put his arm out, holding it over the salt boundary as he waved them closer. At Michelangelo's choked warning, however, he didn't snap his hand back. He frowned, turning his palm over, and then took another step, standing half in, half out of his own circle.

"That's interesting," he mused. "It's not so cold anymore. In fact, it's...kind of normal."

"Do me a favor, Don," Michelangelo said, interrupting his chanting. "Be normal inside the circle."

"Yeah, but..." Donatello said slowly as he looked around the lair. "I wonder if—"

With a tense shudder, Raphael stood and hurried over to his brother's side, grabbing his shoulders and forcibly pulling him a step back inside.

"Inside, Donny," Raphael said. "I swear, you can be as clueless as Mikey sometimes."

About to squawk a protest, Michelangelo fell silent when he saw the rest of his omamori on the ground in front of them. While they had been down at the water's edge, Raphael had been building a kind of bridge out into the darkness, shortening the distance they had to walk, and as they stepped in the gaps between the paper, the sense of safety and warmth radiating outward made him feel like he could stand straight again. His wrenched leg felt a little stronger and he was able to stand on his own, stumbling into Raphael's waiting arms.

"What happened?" Raphael demanded, half-carrying him to the table and putting him in a chair. "You can barely hold yourself up."

"It was trying to rip me apart," Michelangelo said. "It felt like there were dozens of hands all over me, all pulling in different directions."

Raphael turned, intending to pull a blanket from the floor, only to stop as Michelangelo grabbed his arm. Putting his hand on Michelangelo's, Raphael was about to gently pry him off when saw how his brother stared through the table into the distance, wearing a sopping wet mask with flecks of ice along the edge, and his hand tightened with bruising strength trying to keep him close.

The blanket could wait, Raphael decided, and sat beside him instead, hoping his own body heat would warm him just as well. One by one, he removed his brother's mask and straps, wincing at how cold they were.

A few steps away, Donatello gently took the sword from Leonardo's hand, coaxing his white-knuckled grip into opening and releasing the hilt, and then put the sword safely on the floor. He didn't comment on it, sparing Leonardo's feelings and instead concentrating on the bruises blacking his brother's temple and shoulder.

"Looks like you lost your mask," Donatello murmured, tilting Leonardo's head for a better look.

"Ghost tore it off," his brother said as if it happened every day.

"And your arm?"

"Ghost tried to tear it off." Leonardo paused, then realized the marks on his skin weren't going to fade any time soon and owned up to them. "Hit the door and the railing pretty hard, too."

"I can tell." Donatello tilted his head toward the table. "Of course I'm not sure if it rattled any brains in there, oh reckless leader. What would we have done if you disappeared on us completely?"

"I wasn't hardly any use here," Leonardo said, putting his hand on Donatello's shoulder as he went to sit. "And the—"

"Not the point," Donatello sighed as he put his hands on Leonardo's head, forcibly turning him up and peering into his eyes. "But I'll yell at you later. Are you seeing clearly, or is it blurry?"

"It's fine," Leonardo grumbled, pulling away. "I don't have a concussion. The shell took the hit for me...mostly."

"So you got dragged around?" Raphael asked. "Both of you? How'd you get loose?"

Michelangelo shrugged, leaning against Raphael and closing his eyes. "I dunno. It stopped when Don called me and it didn't come back."

"I don't get it," Donatello said. "Why not? It's not like technology bothers them."

"Huh?" Michelangelo asked.

"You said it stopped when I called, right?" Donatello said. "But why would that matter?"

The question hung over them, impossible to answer. They'd stolen Michelangelo back, but they felt the threat looming closer now. Death waited to steal them away, nearly impossible to fight, and only by luck had they won this battle. There wouldn't be nearly enough paper to get them to the door. Unless they found another answer, they would slowly die here.

Hesitating for fear of sounding stupid, Leonardo waited to see if Donatello thought of anything. But as long minutes passed and the silence grew thicker, he leaned forward against the table, intently studying the wood grain so he didn't have to look at his siblings.

"I think," Leonardo said slowly, reasoning out loud. "It's because you believe in it."

"What?" Donatello looked at him, then at Michelangelo. "Wait, you mean Mikey?"

"No, you," Leonardo said. "The cell didn't keep the ghosts away. You did."

Raphael chuckled under his breath. "I think you hit your head harder than you think."

"Raph—"

"Leo, you saw those paper things working," Raphael said over him. "You've seen the salt working. This is the only place they can't get in 'cause of those things. Don's no wizard."

Leonardo glanced at Michelangelo's shellcell, still glowing on the table. They all followed his look, realizing that they'd seen its light beyond the salt.

"It can't be..." Donatello murmured, chasing after his brother's thought. "That one tried to get through when we looked at that altar. It tried to use your cell to come out here."

"But she didn't," Leonardo said. He shook his head when Donatello tried to argue. "Don't think about it logically. It's not gonna work."

"But wait," Donatello said stubbornly. "It just. That doesn't make sense."

"I know."

"Then where are you getting this?"

As Donatello's voice peaked in frustration, he pulled his laptop close and began working again, closing windows and opening another, searching for something that brought up several images of ghosts looking out of cell phones. Leonardo smiled faintly and put his hand on the keyboard, stilling Donatello's hands.

"How come you have power here," Leonardo asked, "and the rest of the place is dark?"

His brother paused, staring at some distant point past the screen. His fingertips tapped the home row keys, scraping his nails lightly on the raised plastic. After a moment, he shared a look with him.

"I was trying to figure that out," Donatello said, lowering his head in defeat. "The maps for this place don't have the wiring schematics, but I've been fixing things up and there's no generator or independent power source for this area. There shouldn't be any electricity here, but there it is."

"Why did the power go out in the first place?" Leonardo asked.

"I don't know," Donatello snapped, turning toward him too quickly, mouth pressed in a thin line. "Quit asking and tell me why if you know so much."

Used to Donatello's moods, Leonardo chuckled at himself and shook his head.

"I'm not trying to tease you. I really don't know how any of that works," he said, nodding at the laptop. "I only know we were safe when the light was on. It was before Mikey started chanting. And it only got dark out there when you were scared. "

None of them argued now. Donatello stared at his screen for another moment, then closed the laptop and turned his full attention on his brother. He didn't need any more explanation. Now that he had the clue of Leonardo's intuition, the rest flowed easily.

"You mean when it grabbed me in the lab," Donatello said, explaining out loud less for his siblings and more for himself. "If that's true, then it wasn't a physical attack. It was a mental attack. Going after the light wasn't because it knows how to pull plugs. It's because I believe in the way things work. It undermined that. The lights went off because I was afraid of them going off.

"Oh geez, this works," he kept going. "Mikey believed in the charms, but you didn't trust yourself, and you didn't see it when we checked the kanji online. You doubted that you got the symbols right so they don't work for you."

Leonardo glanced at Raphael, who nodded once.

"We didn't think to google it," Raphael said. "And you never go online anyway."

"But Raphael didn't even question it," Donatello continued over them. "He had faith, maybe not in them but in Mikey's confidence. And then you..."

Looking over his shoulder, Donatello nodded to himself when he spotted Leonardo's sword on the floor.

"You're kinesthetic," Donatello said. "You think with your body. Of course you'd need your swords."

"Wait," Michelangelo said, lifting his head from its comfortable spot on Raphael's shoulder. "Hold on. Leo, you seriously risked everything to get your sword so you could...cut a ghost?"

About to defend himself, Leonardo suddenly thought that it didn't sound so smart when Michelangelo put it that way. And judging from his little brother's look, the snickering would last for weeks. But he couldn't hold it against him. Simply the result of saving each other's lives so often—the teasing became a backwards kind of thank you.

"Whatever," he said. "It worked, didn't it?"

"It did," Donatello answered over whatever Michelangelo was going to say. "So there is logic here, just not the kind I considered. The attack isn't out there, it's in here." He tapped his head.

"The ghosts are psychic?" Raphael echoed.

"Mental," Donatello clarified for him. "It's not magic. It's all in our heads."

"So..." Leonardo started to shrug, wincing as it pulled his battered shoulder. "How do we fight something that's in our heads?"

"Well, first things first."

With the sense of a heavy weight lifted from his back, Donatello stood up and faced the darkness with a growing smile. As he went to the salt, he glanced to his left and deliberately looked at where the white line had been broken when Michelangelo fell across it. Raphael's patchwork of charms was haphazard, not nearly closing the break. If the salt line was the reason the ghosts couldn't creep in, then they would have been dead already. But they were alive, and it gave him a little proof of his hypothesis.

There was no reason for the kitchen to have lights and nowhere else. He'd opened up the steel pipes covering the electric wires, scrambled up thin railings to reach the power boxes hanging over ledges where old stairs had collapsed. He knew the wiring inside and out. And there was no reason why the lights should be out.

Knowing that didn't give him the answer, though. For a moment he wondered if he should offer a prayer or call out a demand. Just expecting the lights to work wasn't enough. Back in the lab, with that dripping hand grabbing him, trying to drag him inside the cabinet, panic had swallowed him up and if he was honest with himself, the fear hadn't left him. He'd never fought a ghost before. He hadn't thought ghosts could be fought.

But Leonardo had taken a sword to one and survived. Michelangelo had escaped harm with little more than a prayer and his shellcell. Raphael had fought back with a few strips of paper. There was a logical reason for each of them, and it all came back to their own mental defenses. The ghost had simply found Donatello's vulnerability and hit it hard.

But machines and electronics had to obey certain laws. He had the old scratches from torn wires, the old scars from electrical shocks. He knew how the water treatment plant worked. All he had to do was force his intellect to override his fear.

I'm not an animal, he told himself, closing his eyes as he concentrate. I refuse to be ruled by my fear.

A sharp gasp from his left, the chairs scraping back and the soft hum from all around them made Donatello smile before he looked up.

The darkness swept back like a curtain, and again the lights were glowing, all of them burning a beautiful gold.

His smile faded when he saw the floor, however. Long trails of water pooled in the dented floor, colored by the streaks of black ichor that swept up along the walls and hung in disgusting strands from the railings. Human handprints appeared by the bedroom door, in a line on the floor heading down the steps toward the water, its thick messy trail all around the salt as if someone had paced back and forth in front of them.

Donatello knelt and took a better look at the traces on the edge of the line. Long streaks side by side, close together, going around to the walls and up out of sight...he let out a shaky breath. Fear or no fear, that was unsettling.

Whatever had watched them had been dragging itself, crawling on its hands, going in circles over and over. Silently.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's glorious artwork is "Racing back to the light" by H0w-d0-y0u-d0-fell0w-kids.


	9. Chapter 9

After a moment of staring fitfully at the dark streaks and the handprints smeared along the floor, Raphael glanced sidelong at his siblings.

"Okay," he said softly. "Who wants to walk out of here first?"

"I say we grab some things and go," Michelangelo said, staring at a spot on the floor as if he couldn't bear to look at the . "Before this place kills us."

Leonardo shook his head. "We'd never make it past the bridge over the water. Let's get supplies and come back here-"

"Leo," Michelangelo said in a low voice. "We have to leave."

"Mikey-"

"Don't 'Mikey' me!" Michelangelo snapped, and his voice startled all of them as it echoed around the chamber. "Those things almost killed us—I was like five feet from the water when you got me—"

"If we set up here, plan it out-" Leonardo tried.

"Dammit, no!" Michelangelo stomped his foot, glaring at Leonardo with wounded pride and frustration. "Quit acting like it's just another fight. It's not! This isn't like killing ninja or street thugs. Those things, whatever grabbed me..."

He put his arms around himself, looking away as he lowered his head. It would cost his pride to finish, and he didn't move as Raphael put an arm around his shoulders. He mumbled the rest.

"Something hurt when it grabbed me," he said softly. "I've never felt anything like it. It felt wrong. Really wrong."

Leonardo didn't answer for a long moment. Still damp from the river's spray, he understood his little brother's fear. His own arm still ached from where he'd been grabbed, and when he turned his hand over, he found black bruises like soot on his skin. It didn't rub off, and Michelangelo didn't seem surprised. He'd probably tried to wipe his own bruises away, and Leonardo grimaced when he saw that his little brother's marks ran all the way from his hand to his shoulder and along his shell.

No wonder Michelangelo was afraid. The marks, now that Leonardo paid attention to them, felt like patches of ice.

"You're right," he said. "This isn't like any of our other fights."

He went to the other side of their safe haven, the corner that let them see the bridge over the river to the main tunnels. Reaching it would require climbing down a flight of stairs and walking almost two hundred feet to the far wall. Waving his siblings over, he motioned towards it, pausing as it rattled and shook with the force of the river against it.

"It's a real long way across that thing," Leonardo said. "We'd be exposed the whole way. And there's no guarantee we'll be safe if we get over it. Trying to run will just get us killed that much faster."

Michelangelo stared at it, on the verge of tears. "But there's nothing else we can do."

Beside him, Raphael held him, but his expression seemed to say it was less for Michelangelo's benefit and more for his own. Fighting ghosts was all but impossible. All they could do was keep them at bay, and Raphael had already nearly lost two brothers.

"I don't think it's hopeless," Leonardo said. "We've been here for months, and there were no ghosts until now. Can't be a coincidence that the river's come up so high in the last few days."

"It's the heavy winter storm up there," Donatello said. "Every year it rains pretty bad. We might have to last more than a week or...two..."

"The kitchen's stocked pretty well," Leonardo said. "We can make the food last for a good while. So the main thing is seeing if we can grab anything in the lair that we need. More blankets and the futons, maybe, more paper for ofuda."

"...wait a sec..." Donatello murmured, glancing at the bridge again.

Raphael didn't hear him. "Supplies so we don't go stir crazy—the game boy, the cards—"

"I don't wanna go back in the bedroom," Michelangelo mumbled, shrugging off Raphael and heading to the kitchen. "I'll stay in here and make dinner...breakfast? Something, I guess—"

"Mikey, hang on." Raphael followed after him, hovering at the doorway, not sure of what to say.

Feeling a deep ache where his bruises were, Leonardo sighed and leaned against the wall, staring despondently at the bridge. Such a short distance, but they were as good as cut off on their little dark island. Only inches beneath the bridge, the waves splashed the metal, turning it slick. If the ghosts really were in the water, it would be simple enough to just grab them from the edges.

"Wait!" Donatello gasped, eyes widening. He pushed past Raphael and stood over his computer, too busy typing to sit down. "Wait, I just thought of something."

Leonardo looked over his shoulder, but Donatello had opened a .pdf file of several floor plans and scrolled through them so quickly that he had to look away.

"What is it?" Leonardo asked.

"This is a water treatment plant," Donatello said breathlessly. "And you said yourself the river's overflowing more than usual. I have a real bad idea..."

Long minutes passed. In the kitchen, Michelangelo did his best to ignore them and went through the motions of preparing dinner, just shaking his head when Raphael tried to get him to talk. Leonardo watched them, then sighed and sank down in a chair, listening to Donatello type.

"Before we do anything else," Leonardo mumbled, more to himself than his brothers, "we should eat and get some sleep. Take the time so that we all get enough sleep even if we stand watches. But it'd be best if Mikey could make more ofuda just in case before we rest..."

"Not a bad idea," Donatello said. "Both of you should definitely sleep. Raph and I can manage—"

Before he could finish, Leonardo had looked up, startled, and grabbed his arm.

"Whoa—no one leaves this spot unless we're all awake," Leonardo cut him off. "Got it? You don't leave. Don't you dare—"

"I won't—we won't," Donatello swore, pausing at his work. "I promise. I didn't mean we'd leave the circle. I meant we'll keep working in here until you and Mikey are feeling better. We're not going anywhere. And it's probably better if we have two people standing watch anyway."

Donatello winced, not at Leonardo's strong grip but at the raw look in his eyes. His brother was doing his best to keep them calm, to keep them safe from things he could barely fight, and Leonardo couldn't allow himself to feel the fear the same way Michelangelo could. He had no outlet, not until they were safe again. And until they were safe, his fear would manifest despite himself, desperately clinging to his siblings and keeping them close.

"We're not going anywhere," Donatello said again. "Promise. If you promise no more running off on your own, either."

Leonardo stared at him for a moment, blinking as if he had to think about what his brother meant. Then he breathed out and nodded, closing his eyes.

"Yeah. Sorry."

"Don't worry about it," Donatello said, turning back to the computer. "Besides, I might know...how..."

His voice trailed off as he read another page. He nodded to himself, sitting down to study the page closer.

"Leo..." Donatello murmured, "I think I know where the ghosts are coming from."

No answer. They'd all learned to wait for him to breathlessly explain rather than annoy him with stupid questions. Donatello looked over the screen again, then ran a quick search to find a term further in the text.

"The filters...it has to do with the filtration. Oh...geez..."

"What?" Leonardo asked.

"Leo, this is..." Donatello took a breath. "Okay, it has to do with what this place is. It's a water treatment plant, but it's more specialized than that. It's the first part, the monitoring part, the screening part. I think that's why they could shut it down. You can always just add screens to the next—"

"Don?"

"Oh, right," Donatello said. "Sorry. Anyway, this plant was to monitor what was in the water, test for pollutants, screen out the larger debris. That's what all those screens were downstairs. They were for the filters."

"Okay," Leonardo said slowly. "So this place caught the big pieces of trash in the river. I still don't get it."

"I forgive you 'cause you're tired," Donatello said. "I'm gonna need to put a camera down there just to be sure, but Leo...I think that's why we have ghosts. The water's gotta go out somewhere, but there's too much junk in the way now. And part of that junk is—"

Leonardo's eyes lit understand. "Bodies."

They stared at each other for a moment, letting the realization wash over them fully. Somewhere beneath them, deep in the cold water, the dead lay pressed against the wall. Then Leonardo stood and retrieved his sword.

"Leo?" Donatello said, half-standing.

"I have a hunch," Leonardo said. "But I need to look at the river to be sure."

"But right now?" Donatello said. He waved at the black streaks on the floor and up the wall. "With whatever that thing is around up here?"

"We haven't seen it," Leonardo said. "It would've come around by now. I think the light chased everything away. And we're just going to the railing."

Narrowing his eyes, Donatello shook his head and blocked Leonardo's way. "You just said you're dead tired. Now you wanna head out there?"

"I think it'll be okay," Leonardo said, but he didn't try to move around his brother. "It's not cold anymore."

Donatello paused, surprised by the warm air that he hadn't noticed until it was pointed out to him. He looked toward the railing, to where he new the river ran. The water was icy by this time of year, but the lair was back to its usual temperature. The tunnels could get so warm that the river was a nice breath of cool air.

He looked back at Leonardo, measuring just what it would take to force him to wait until he was rested. But he recognized the determination in his brother's eyes. All of them could turn hard headed, and he'd dangled possible enemies in front of Leonardo. And if he was honest, his own curiosity itched to take a look in the water.

"Stay put," Donatello said, holding up one hand. "Let me tell Raph and Mikey, unless you want them to come out here and think a ghost got us."

About to argue, Leonardo bit back his reply and nodded once. Donatello shouldered past him, trusting that he'd wait.

Not wanting to face Michelangelo now, Leonardo leaned against the table and took a long breath. He'd suffered an accumulation of bad karma, but Michelangelo had been terrified. The trauma was different, and he didn't think he was the one to try to convince their little brother that this wasn't a stupid idea.

He closed his eyes. No, going out so soon probably wasn't the smartest thing he could do, but he wanted to see what had attacked them. The shadowy girl in the lower room was nothing more than a silhouette, and everything else had been invisible. Even the thing crawling around them was silent and unseen.

Worse, the ghosts felt formless. If hands grabbed him, he felt no weight behind them, no body, just strength pulling at him. In this battle of wills, if he didn't see the outline of his enemy, this constant wearing down through fear would defeat him for them.

In the kitchen, their voices rose, followed by a crash. Leonardo turned and found Michelangelo in the kitchen door, a dish smashed to pieces behind him on the floor. Donatello and Raphael stood behind him, mouths open at a loss of what to say, and with eyes burning a weary red, Michelangelo stomped towards him and grabbed his shell.

"You just wanna leave me in here?" Michelangelo snapped.

"You're the one who didn't wanna come out," Leonardo said, startled into answering like a big brother being pestered by the baby of the family.

"Oh, you rotten son of—"

Growling in irritation, Michelangelo let go of him, then grabbed one of the ofuda off the floor and went to the line of salt. He glared over his shoulder at them.

"Well?" he demanded. "We going or not?"

As if he had the good grace to be sheepish, Leonardo ducked his head, hiding his relieved smile. An angry little brother was a lot better than frightened little brother.

With a deep breath, Leonardo steadied himself, then stepped half-outside their safe zone, one foot over the line. His hand perceptibly tightened on his sword hilt, but when nothing happened, he cautiously took another step, standing in the clear. Michelangelo matched him, his anger giving way to worry, and then to a shaky smile as nothing touched him.

Similarly grabbing ofuda, Raphael stepped out with them, and Donatello swallowed once, feeling that believing the lights would stay on was his job.

With their lair partially reclaimed, Leonardo breathed out.

"...okay," he said. "Let's see what's over the edge."


	10. Chapter 10

Three of them crossed over the line easily enough. Hesitating at the line of salt, Donatello's curiosity won out and he followed after them, jogging to catch up. Paranoia gnawed at him, the fear that the lights would dim suddenly and go out, and the more he worried about it, the stronger the fear grew.

The nearest light crackled, and Leonardo froze, putting his hand on Donatello's shoulder. He didn't look away from the railing.

"Don't be afraid," Leonardo said softly. "There's no reason for the lights to go out."

"How'd you guess?" Donatello asked, laughing self-consciously under his breath. "Sorry 'bout that."

"Just don't wanna get caught in the dark," Leonardo said, smiling to reassure him. "That's something we'll have to get later. Flashlights."

"Right."

They stopped at the railing. Donatello glanced at his brother to see if he would go down the steps, but Leonardo seemed content to lean against the railing and look over the edge. For a long time they stared at the water, feeling the deep rumble of the river shaking the steel.

"I dunno," Donatello said. "I don't think I see anything down there."

Leonardo frowned and pointed towards the far wall. "Back there, where the water meets the bricks."

They followed his look, peering at the far corner as the river splashed and swirled, a sharp line of white against the faint green stain of algae and muck. Something bobbed up and down, now appearing, now sinking under the waves, turning in quick circles as the water threw it around.

"What is it?" Michelangelo murmured, leaning on the railing.

"Proof the river's carrying stuff down here," Raphael said, and he put his hand on his little brother too pull him back firmly off the railing. "Like something trapped in the sink. Hey, think it'll—?"

Whatever had been bobbing suddenly went under as if pulled. They waited a few moments, but it didn't come up again.

"Strong current," Donatello said softly. "I'll bet there's a hell of an undertow in there. It'll just suck anything down."

"To where?" Raphael asked. "Where's the water go? I mean, we ain't flooding so where's the river going out?"

"Well," Donatello said, remembering the blueprints he had studied. "This is a water treatment plant. It gets filtered and then it goes out. There are huge grates down there—you could just see the tip of them before."

"'Filtered'," Leonardo echoed. "Like those screens we saw in the room downstairs?"

"You mean when you said hi to the ghost?" Raphael muttered. If he didn't say 'dumbass', then at least his tone heavily implied it.

"Yeah," Donatello said, not noticing how Leonardo glared at their sibling as he thought. "Those same screens. There's probably another plant farther along, so they could afford to stop running this one. I'll have to look up the policies, but I think they would've opened the grates wide and then let it be."

"Opened them up," Leonardo said. "So they didn't take them out?"

"I don't know," Donatello said. "I mean, I saw something that looked like it down there ages ago when the water level wasn't so high, but I wasn't really looking, you know? Of course..."

Donatello leaned on the railing and stared at the water.

"'Of course' what?" Raphael asked.

"Well, think about it," Donatello said. "We have filters in our bikes, right? And we have to change them out sometimes when they get too dirty. Same thing with the grates down there. Sure, they opened them up, but after enough time, they're gonna get clogged. And then nothing gets through, and the water level gets higher."

"Aw crap," Raphael cursed. "Does that mean the water ain't gonna go down again?"

"Worse," Leonardo said. "That means there's no way to get those filters clear. We'll just have to hope that the river'll go down when the storm-"

Steel groaned somewhere deep in the floors below them. Leonardo's voice trailed off as they turned, scanning in all directions. With the echoes that such a large space created, it was impossible to tell where the sound was coming from. A rumble went through the floors, as if something heavy was in the middle and straining to push its way out.

"I think..." Raphael whispered. "We should get back to the circle."

As he took a step toward the kitchen, however, Leonardo grabbed his arm and held him fast. A loud scrape came from the far staircase. Although the lights were on, although the stairs were straight ahead, the corner of the wall and their bedroom door, still flung open, cast a long shadow across the steps.

"What is it?" Donatello whispered.

"Maybe it's the chick from downstairs," Michelangelo breathed back. He blinked and looked over his shoulder. "Oh hell..."

They didn't have to look. The river had gone still, no longer splashing but lying calm, quietly lapping against the steel walkways. Water dripped somewhere out of sight, each drop punctuating how silent the huge space had become.

"It wasn't the storm making the river splash around," Michelangelo whispered, barely loud enough to hear. His breath turned ragged, uneven as he felt cold jolts down his back. "There's something down there. There's something-"

Another long scrape, like nails on a blackboard, came from the stairs, and with it an overpowering sense of malice and cruel intent. As if something darkly intelligent were dragging itself up the steps in long, painful strokes. Closest to the stairs, a light bulb sparked and went out.

"We gotta go back," Michelangelo whispered, trying to make himself move. He managed to take one step. "We gotta-"

Inside the kitchen, a mug audibly tipped over and smashed on the floor. Stray bits of white glass fell out of the doorway, followed by the light flickering rapidly. Although the kitchen light stayed on, the light over the table hummed louder and louder until it popped. The dim light from the doorway fell across the hall as the scrapes on the staircase grew closer, until finally it stopped.

"Can you see anything?" Raphael whispered, not sure who he was asking.

"How'd it do that?" Michelangelo breathed. "The lights went out. How'd it get past the salt? How'd it get past my ofuda? How-?"

Water slapped the floor. Half in and out of the shadow, a small mark spread outward as if an invisible wet rag had been struck on the steel floor, discoloring it and gleaming in the light. After a moment, another mark appeared with the same damp plop, only a few inches further.

"It's walking," Donatello realized. "We can't see it, but we can see it moving."

"But what is it?" Raphael whispered.

Their bedroom door slammed wide open, startling them, and then an unused storage room was likewise forced open, the lock hanging broken in the door. As it came slowly closer, they could hear a raspy breathing—inhuman, as if whatever it could only drag air through the tiniest of holes.

"It's looking for us," Leonardo whispered.

Leonardo realized his mistake as soon as he spoke. The breathing stopped, but not as if it had disappeared. The air in the room changed as the thing stopped searching and instead turned to stare down the long hallway, past the rooms, past the kitchen, past the wide space of the open floor directly at the turtles in front of the river.

"Oh hell," Leonardo realized with a sinking feeling. "She got out."

What were now unmistakably footsteps suddenly came rushing directly for him. The splashes of black water were all he had to judge where it was. He had the brief flash of a woodcut picture from the books, of a samurai on a bridge facing a ghost, and he drew his sword as he stepped forward, using his momentum to make one clean cut.

Black water sprayed the floor in a line like blood. Leonardo held still, listening for the tiniest sound, even of one drop falling. He shivered. The sensation of biting ice crept up along his sword through his hands and arms, and his breath misted in the air.

"Did you get it?" Raphael whispered.

"It's strong," Leonardo said, more out of shock than an answer. He blinked and made himself focus. "We're out of time. Don, you have to get those things out of here now."

"What?" Donatello looked away to the far wall, trying to make out the very tops of the grates. "But even if I could figure out the controls, they're over thirty years old. The rust alone would-"

He broke off, tightening his hands on the railing. Now that the river was still, he saw dark forms sliding under the surface, circling like sharks that came closer and turned over—he stopped breathing, choked as he saw their skeletal outlines and the empty sockets of their eyes. Despite his fear, he couldn't help counting them off. Two...five...eight, nine...twelve... He followed one as it moved towards the walkways that led to the river, disappearing under the rusting steel.

A grey hand surged out of the water and lay flat on the walkway, the arm bent up at an impossible angle. Like a broken doll, a second arm came up and then the—body? Ghost?—Donatello settled for dead girl as she pulled herself out of the water and dragged her body onto the walkway, her head barely lifted up as if she didn't need to see. More of her appeared, her shoulders and back, her...

Donatello recoiled back a step. Her waist and legs were gone, and black ichor spilled out of her torn waist. With a snap of her head, she somehow stared right at him, and then she was climbing, coming up the walkway too fast, intent on reaching him.


	11. Chapter 11

The same sound of groaning steel came back, sharper than before, and a loud scraping followed by a sudden splash. The three sounds in quick succession brought back Donatello's attention as he found his siblings had turned, slowly backing away from the kitchen and toward his lab. At first he felt a stab of betrayal—they had been so safe inside their small circle of light, and now they were abandoning it? But another glance over Raphael's shoulder showed him how the water had backed up in the sink and spilled over the counter, dissolving the salt and shorting out the lights. In a moment, the kitchen was dark and no amount of believing would bring it back.

"New plan, braniac," Raphael said, grabbing him and pulling him along. "We get you to your lab and you figure out something."

They turned and ran. When he glanced over his shoulder, he spotted Leonardo slowly backing up after them, fending off whatever had come up from below. He couldn't see anything, but then his big brother slashed and water splashed the walls. The low, painful breathing didn't stop.

Down the long corridor to his lab, leaving the fight behind them, and the three of them were about to go through the lab door when Donatello stopped in his tracks.

"Not that way," he said, turning and grabbing the pipes running along the side of the wall. "We need to go up. I think I know where the controls are."

He climbed up over the top of the lab. There were access ladders and stairs near the bedroom, but he wasn't about to walk all the way back.

"You sure you don't need nothing?" Raphael asked, climbing up despite his question.

"Positive," Donatello said, pointing to the raised platform built into the wall and the tall boxes rusting on top of it. "I don't need the main controls—we just need the emergency valves, and besides, the lab's haunted anyway."

As if to prove his point, the lock below quietly clicked and the hinges creaked as the door opened by slow degrees.

"You figure it out," Raphael said, turning and facing the rear. "I'll keep 'em off your back for awhile."

Donatello was about to demand 'how' but noticed the handful of ofuda Raphael clutched tightly like a security blanket. He didn't want to know what the thing downstairs would do to a few scraps of paper if a katana barely scratched it, and he set himself to prying open the access panels.

"What're we looking for?" Michelangelo asked beside him, pulling off panels as well.

"Big valves," Donatello said, groaning as he dragged one rusty box open. "The schematics I studied said they should be here. We just have to turn them."

"That's it?" Michelangelo scoffed. "All this crap and we just had to turn some cranks?"

"Well, it's not that easy," Donatello said. "There's no power to them so we'll have to force 'em by hand, and depending on how rusted they are—"

Finally they tore open the panel closest to the edge, heavily corroded from decades of spray from the river with a gash already left on the side by rust, revealing a line of three valves as large as their heads, all of them covered in cobwebs, thick grime and a layer of corrosive water. Donatello sighed and grabbed the first one, turning with all his strength. It refused to budge.

"Hang on," Michelangelo said, and he jammed his nunchuck between the valve's spokes. As he took one end, Donatello grabbed the steel edge again, and in one effort they leaned their weight against the valve.

Nothing happened. Michelangelo put his foot against the wall and strained. And then they felt it slip half an inch, then another half, moving in tiny jerks. Several meters away in the water, they heard steel screeching against steel.

"Keep...going..." Donatello ground out, pulling so hard that he shook. "Just...a little..."

The valve finally slid free. A few more turns had the grating in the river turning as well, flipping so that any debris dislodged and ran with the current, vanishing down into the tunnels.

"I dunno what you did!" Raphael called out. "But keep it up! Some of 'em disappeared!"

'Some'? Donatello and Michelangelo shared a look, then glanced at their brother. Dark shades and half-formed ghosts stood in a semi-circle around Raphael, trying to float or drag themselves closer and repelled by the ofuda. Raphael held two in his hands, waving back any that came too close, but he clearly had to depend on the two ofuda he'd set on the floor, and a thin layer of water slowly spread outward and the paper was beginning to soak. From where they stood, they could see that the ink was starting to blur.

"Shell," Michelangelo breathed. "There's so many of them..."

"'Least it ain't that big one, right?" Raphael reminded him. "Hurry up!"

With redoubled efforts, they attacked the second valve, but this one had been closer to the torn panel and turned only after Michelangelo struck it several times, knocking a shower of flaked metal off the sides. As they forced it open, they heard not only the grating in the river but a shout from Raphael, who had fallen to one knee.

"Shit!" Raphael yelled, backing up several inches and leaning on the railing. "Don't let 'em touch ya—they just suck out all the heat."

"Raph-!" Donatello turned, not sure how to help but intent on trying, but Michelangelo grabbed his arm and forced him back to the valves.

"Just one more," Michelangelo said, getting a good grip on the last round edge. "Right?"

Donatello nodded and joined him, but immediately they could feel this one would be hardest. It looked like a mass of orange and brown rust, flaking even as they tried to turn it. As Michelangelo strained, leaning back with all his weight, the whole side of it broke off in his hand. He stared at it in shock, then snarled and hurled the useless piece of steel at the shades around Raphael. It passed through them harmlessly, noisily clanging out of sight.

In the following silence, Michelangelo realized how dark the lair had become, with only the pair of lights by them and one down in the corridor below. A second later, that light went out and the last two bulbs began to flicker unsteadily.

Raphael shouted in pain again, falling sideways and trying to crawl backwards. Donatello grabbed him and pulled him clear, but the wet ofuda had failed, leaving them only two to hold back the darkness. Out of options, Donatello held Raphael tight and closed his eyes.

Michelangelo swallowed once. His older brother was somewhere in the dark, and he no longer heard any sounds beside their own panicked breathing. They only had a few seconds left before the things were on top of them.

"Just one more grate," he whispered to himself. "Right?"

They were gonna die anyway, he told himself. Better to die fighting.

Without hesitating, he darted over the railing into the darkness and landed on top of the lab, then jumped again, taking one last breath before diving blindly into the river.


	12. Chapter 12

Michelangelo broke the surface and sunk into the river, sucked under by the terrible current. Roaring like a monster, the water was impossible to see through and he blindly reached for the final grate which he knew he had to be near, scrabbling at the wall in a panic. The things down in the water with him wouldn't give him much time before they attacked.

His fingers brushed sharp slats of metal, and he barely felt the deep cuts as he grabbed at them, breaking one and tearing it free. When he let go, it shot away with the current, and he reached for another one.

A hand as strong as steel wrapped around his ankle. Another grabbed the edge of his shell. An arm slid around his side and up his plastron, seizing his throat. Fingers dug into his skin and pulled at him, wrapping around him like snakes, and Michelangelo felt keenly that his grave was rising up around him.

He broke another slat, the rusty steel giving way with a satisfying crumble even as it gouged his palm, and something disgustingly limp and slick, like the body of a dead insect, rushed over the back of his arm and vanished. A moment later, the arm around his chest vanished.

Hope surged. The things around him held him like vises, turning heavy as they tried to sink him to where their bodies rested, but with another destroyed slat, another pair of hands disappeared.

His lungs began to cramp. He could spend several minutes underwater, but even turtles had their limits and he knew he wouldn't finish in time. Knowing it was a risk, he loosened his grip on the grate and let them drag him deeper.

His feet touched the floor, and as he fumbled for the grate again, he found short sections of steel completely stopped up by masses of soft, straggling wisps that he couldn't identify. It was like putting his hand in a sink clogged with stray bits of food and trash, and he felt a deep urge to throw up as he realized some of what he was touching was a mass of hair still attached to a person.

As if pushing past a row of broken dolls, he reached into the mass, found the slats, and broke it outward. Something slipped by him, and then more trash sped through the sudden hole. Michelangelo felt a little relief that his gamble had paid off. The majority of debris had sunk to the bottom, and destroying the next slat sent a violent rush of material past him and out of the lair forever.

But the hands didn't fade. The more he tried to find another handhold, the more he realized just how much had accumulated, how many bodies he was surrounded by. Another slid over his eyes and began pulling him away, and even as he broke off another piece, he knew he couldn't clear it all. The grate was taller than he was and several feet wide, with so much gathered over the years that the sheer impossibility of it crushed him.

As he fell backward, smothered under what had to be dozens, perhaps even hundreds of ghosts, he wished he'd stayed on the platform. At least he could have died with his brothers-

A deep rumble boomed through the river, then the high pitched shriek of twisting steel. Michelangelo gasped in pain, losing the last of his breath, and the river turned horrifically fast. The things holding him down were stripped away, dragging their fingers down his skin. Only because he was pressed flat to the floor did he escape the current, and he grabbed the closest thing at hand--a pipe embedded in the floor--to hold himself in place.

The river ran clear. Halos appeared far above him, gold and white and shimmering, reflections of light on the water's surface. His eyes widened and he looked down toward the wall--he could make out the grate and saw that it had been utterly shattered, completely open to anything drifting by.

He almost laughed. He hadn't broken the screen, but something else had. His brothers were alive, he was sure of it.

His lungs rocked him once, threatening to breathe water, and Michelangelo turned on his front to crawl close to the wall, then climb along the pipe to the top. He gasped as he broke the surface, clinging to the railing jutting out from the side. As he blinked away water, he found that the railing was attached to a catwalk he had never noticed before, partially hidden by the shadows. Coughing, he pulled himself up and took a moment to catch his breath.

"Mikey!"

Michelangelo looked up and cried out in sheer relief. On the opposite side of the river, Leonardo sat on the lowest step of the walkway, leaning heavily on the wall with his head hung wearily on his shoulder. His older brother smiled and relaxed, all the tension sliding away.

A faint shout from higher up caught his attention. Raphael and Donatello stood together, Raphael partly supporting Donatello who visibly favored one leg, but both were grinning.

Eager to get back to the right side, Michelangelo rose to his feet and rushed up the the walkway, carefully crossing the bridge for fear of slipping. As he came onto the main floor, he found evidence of how hot the fighting had been with great splashes thrown along the wall and floor, and his brother's sword lay at the first step of the walkway to the river. Frowning, Michelangelo went down after him and found blood along the railing and grating.

"What happened?" he asked as he knelt by his brother, putting one arm over his shoulders and standing slowly. "You okay?"

"I'll be fine," Leonardo said, but he kept his hands curled and didn't try to touch the railing. "Just got dragged a bit."

"I don't think it was the ghost bleeding out," Michelangelo said.

"I don't think the ghost was afraid of drowning," Leonardo said. "It's just skin off my hands. It'll heal."

Heavy footsteps on the walkway made them look up at Raphael, who grimaced at the blood and held his hands out to take Leonardo from Michelangelo.

"And Don gets to go steal tetanus shots for all of us," Raphael said. "Here, give 'im to me. You both look worn to hell."

"So do you," Michelangelo said, but he let Raphael manage their brother and then grabbed Raphael's shell, letting him pull him along. "Did you get that valve to turn?"

"Nope," Raphael said. "Buncha those ghosts suddenly disappeared, so then Don decided to walk along that big pipe and turn the gears manually."

"I don't get it," Michelangelo said. He looked over his shoulder at where the boxes holding the valves stood, then followed the insulated pipes from the boxes to where they extended over the river. "Oh wow."

Twenty feet above the river, the pipe was obliterated, smashed so that the cracks spread out along the entire length. The mechanism inside lay bare, likewise dented and broken. The shock of Donatello hitting it had forced the rusted, jammed grate to turn and shattered it in the process.

Michelangelo felt a chill. His brother had stood up there and nearly destroyed the very foothold he'd been standing on. A little more strength and the pipe would've disintegrated, Donatello would've fallen and then been swept through the stream, probably to his death.

Just like Leonardo could have died, or Raphael could have been swarmed, or Michelangelo could have drowned.

"But we're all okay?" Leonardo asked, groaning softly as Raphael set him in one of the chairs at the table.

Across from him, Donatello nodded with a tired smile.

"Mostly," Raphael said. "Me and Don both got grabbed by those things. And your hands look bad, and Mikey looks like a drowned rat. But...I think we're okay."

"What happened down there?" Donatello asked his little brother. "You must've got rid of some of them. They vanished when they were about to grab us."

"I couldn't see anything," Michelangelo asked. "I was just breaking up that grate, and it wasn't going so good, and those things were grabbing me...I didn't think I was gonna get out of there."

"You bought 'em a little time," Leonardo said. "It worked out."

"Do you think they're all gone?" Donatello asked, looking between Leonardo and Michelangelo.

"Hell if I know," Michelangelo said. "Ghost stories are always different. Sometimes they disappear. Sometimes they aren't tied to their bodies at all."

"So if we go downstairs," Raphael asked, "that chick'll still be inside that little room?"

"No," Leonardo said, shaking his head once. "She vanished when Don forced the gate to open."

"How'd you know?" Raphael asked. "We haven't gone back down there."

Leonardo looked at him, surprised that he didn't know. "She was the one dragging me. That's why it was so strong. I'll bet she was the first one to get stuck and someone managed to seal her in. When I go down there again, I'm sure the ofuda will all be torn."

"You're so not going down there again," Michelangelo said. "I'm gonna cover it with charms and then lock the door. And Don'll weld it shut."

Leonardo sighed but didn't argue.

"So..." Michelangelo asked, stretching muscles as they grew increasingly sore. "I gotta ask. Do we stay here?"

They looked at him, then back at Leonardo. He blinked, not sure how to answer, then half-shrugged and winced when that hurt.

They sat quietly for a moment, listening to the familiar sounds of the lair. The river flowed softly and the lights hummed in the background, and in the kitchen, the refrigerator clicked on in a regular cycle. A faint breeze even blew through the lair, swirled around by the rushing water.

"I can't decide that," Leonardo admitted. "You three have to choose. If you want to leave, we'll find someplace else."

They shared another look. Finding a home had never been easy, and they'd already settled in comfortably here. Moving meant finding a temporary place while they searched, impossible to defend, especially while they were all wounded.

"What do you think we should do?" Raphael asked him.

Leonardo hesitated, then chuckled once.

"We just cleared it out," he laughed. "What're the odds it happens again?"

Raphael smiled. "I dunno, with our luck?"

"There'll be a ghost in the bathroom in a week," Donatello said. "Probably come right out of the shower head."

"No way," Michelangelo said, smiling despite himself. "The tub. Big rubber ducky ghost."

They chuckled again, low laughter that didn't disturb the lair. None of them wanted to get up, keeping each other within arm's reach. In a few minutes they would start to move, either to get bandages or pain killers, and Michelangelo wanted to create several ofuda before he slept, "just in case", but for now they savored their pain and the warmth of sitting together.

And the river, always close at hand, flowed swift and clear into the darkness beyond their home.


End file.
